Lisa Graziose Corrin is the Ellen Philips Katz Executive Director of Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art, an internationally recognized teaching and learning resource for Northwestern and its surrounding communities. As Executive Director, Corrin has provided transformative leadership re-envisioning the Museum’s mission with a focus on the presentation of art across time, place and media, and emphasizing both global and interdisciplinary perspectives. Under Corrin the Block Museum has become central to the DNA of Northwestern University, operating as a platform for cross-disciplinary partnership, broad public engagement and innovative scholarship. In her time at The Block, Corrin has initiated strategic partnerships across all of Northwestern’s 11 schools, toured exhibitions nationally and internationally receiving media coverage in over 30 nations, diversified the exhibition, acquisition, and engagement programs, and raised attendance to an annual visitation of 60,000.
Previously Corrin served as the Director of the Williams College Museum of Art and the Deputy Director of Art and Chief Curator at the Seattle Art Museum, where she served as the artistic lead for the Olympic Sculpture Park. As the park's curator, she commissioned works by Louise Bourgeois, Mark Dion, Teresita Fernández, and Roy McMakin, and acquired sculpture by Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, Tony Smith, and Roxy Paine.
From 1997-2001 Corrin was the Chief Curator at The Serpentine Gallery in London and curated an international program of exhibitions featuring the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torrs, Stan Douglas, Andreas Gursky, Hans Haacke, Yayoi Kusama, Brice Marden, Chris Ofili, Bridget Riley, Richard Artschwager, Do-Ho Suh, Gilbert and George, Gillian Wearing, Rachel Whiteread, and Chen Zhen, among others.
Corrin's museum career began as the first curator of Baltimore's Contemporary Museum, a nomadic museum without walls. She has curated over sixty exhibitions including innovative reinstallations of collections that brought together contemporary art with historic objects. These include: Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson at the Maryland Historical Society; Going for Baroque at The Walters Art Gallery; and Give & Take, at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Corrin has published widely on contemporary art, including public art, and museology. Her book on Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum was awarded the Wittenborn Prize. She was also the co-author of a monograph on Mark Dion for Phaidon Press.