Art educator and administrator Mario R. Rossero has been appointed the new director of the Andy Warhol Museum and vice president of the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh network, per a January 8 announcement from the organization.
Currently serving as the executive director of the National Art Education Association (NAEA), Rossero is set to join the museum on March 31 — a little over a year since former Warhol Museum Director Patrick Moore announced his resignation. He will be taking over from interim director Rachel Baron-Horn.
Hailing from rural southwest Pennsylvania, Rossero earned his Bachelor’s degree in Art and Education at Washington and Jefferson College in 1997 before debuting as a teaching artist at the Warhol Museum. He simultaneously taught elementary art in the Shaler Area School District encompassing part of north Pittsburgh before moving to New York City in 2001 for a graduate degree in Educational Administration and Supervision at the Bank Street College of Education.
Pursuing leadership roles in the art education sector, Rossero moved to Chicago after graduating, making his way up in the Chicago Public Schools network from teaching to administrative and director roles overseeing the city’s fine and performing arts magnet schools and programs. He maintained senior roles structuring the arts curriculum in both Pittsburgh’s and Chicago’s public schools before his 2015 appointment as the senior vice president of education at the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington, DC.
Rossero became the executive director of NAEA in 2020, where he helped secure an $8.5 million grant from the United States Department of Education in 2021 to bolster art education around the country with an emphasis on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility as well as professional development.
“For me this is a homecoming, returning to an institution that played a pivotal role in my early career, shaping my approach and trajectory as an artist, educator and organizational leader,” Rossero said in a statement regarding his new appointment, noting his excitement in sustaining Warhol’s legacy and further developing the museum’s tourism and education initiative known as the Pop District.
Rossero enters the museum amid contention surrounding the Pop District, which has reportedly driven multiple high-level employees away due to concerns about the project’s ambitions misaligning with the museum’s mission and resources.
The news of Rossero’s appointment also comes in the wake of controversy over a museum wall text for Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (1980). The label referred to the “Middle East conflict” and “the loss of Jewish lives” but made no mention of Palestinians, workers told Hyperallergic last February. The text was co-authored by former Director Patrick Moore and former Chief Curator Aaron Levi Garvey; the latter held the role for less than a year before departing, as reported by the Pittsburgh City Paper.
