Tom di Maria, Director
Tom di Maria, Director
Tom di Maria (he/him) joined DisArt’s Board of Directors in 2020. Tom was hired as Director of Creative Growth Art Center in January, 2000. Since then, he has developed partnerships with museums, galleries and international design companies to help bring Creative Growth’s artists with disabilities fully into the contemporary art world. He speaks around the world about the Center’s major artists and their relationship to both Outsider Art and contemporary culture. Prior to this position, he served as Assistant Director of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley, and Executive Director of the San Francisco International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. He received his MFA in photography from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore, and a BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has received filmmaking awards from the Sundance Film Festival and others festivals for his experimental filmmaking, and in 2019 he received the Visionary Award from the American Folk Art Museum in New York.