{"id":20388,"date":"2017-07-19T11:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artzealous.com\/?p=20388"},"modified":"2017-07-19T12:38:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-19T12:38:53","slug":"jobs-in-the-art-world-nora-gomez-strauss-director-of-digital-at-public-art-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artzealous.com\/jobs-in-the-art-world-nora-gomez-strauss-director-of-digital-at-public-art-fund\/","title":{"rendered":"Jobs in the Art World: Nora Gomez-Strauss, Director of Digital at Public Art Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is sliding into someone\u2019s DMs (Direct Messaging on Instagram) an effective means of meeting your new mentor?<\/p>\n

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I did just this to start a conversation with Nora Gomez-Strauss, Director of Digital at the Public Art Fund <\/a>(PAF). Nora is a born-and-bred Queens girl, whose passions include education, the city, and all things digital. Plugged into developments in social media from the start, in the beginning of her career, as assistant to the then-director of the Queens Museum, Tom Finkelpearl, she started the museum\u2019s Twitter, fostering its now massive following of 158,000. Now as Director of Digital at PAF, she mans all aspects of the organization\u2019s web presence\u2014overseeing website design, video production, and the comments sections of social channels (in her words, a version of a visitor services department). On Nora\u2019s personal Instagram (@nogophoto), you can follow her around New York, public art projects, and on family adventures with her adorable three-year-old Santiago (Santi, for short) and husband David Strauss, Deputy Director of the Queens Museum.<\/p>\n

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On a sunny day Nora and I met IRL\u2014with iced coffees in hand, we sat down near the Public Art Fund office. Read Nora\u2019s take on the role of digital for nonprofits and young professionals, \u201csliding into DMs,\u201d and the exciting exhibitions PAF has planned for its 40th anniversary.<\/p>\n

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Art Zealous: For those who don\u2019t know, tell me about where you\u2019ve worked in the arts and how you got to where you are now.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nora Gomez-Strauss:<\/strong> I\u2019m from Queens, New York. My parents love the arts and growing up in NYC, we had a lot of museums to explore. I was lucky enough to attend LaGuardia High School For the Arts (the \u201cFame\u201d school), which cemented my love for art. I then studied art education and photography at SUNY New Paltz thinking I would become an art teacher.<\/p>\n

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One summer I was working at the 92nd Street Y arts camp and was with the kids at City Hall Park for lunch. A PAF\u00a0Julian Opie<\/a> show (above) was up and the kids went wild for it; sketching, running around to see all of the pieces. I began to think about what other kinds of jobs were out there that engaged people with art.<\/p>\n

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In my last few weeks of college, I was offered a teaching job upstate and got into Pratt for their Arts & Cultural Management graduate program. After wrestling with the decision, I decided to go to Pratt. It was life changing because it gave me that \u201cin\u201d I didn\u2019t have. It offered a path to internships and relationships I wouldn\u2019t have had otherwise. It was in my last year there that I started working at the Queens Museum. I interviewed the then-Director Tom Finkelpearl for my thesis. A few weeks later he let me know that a position for his assistant was open and I jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n

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I started as his assistant and the CIG (Cultural Institutions Group) coordinator for the City of New York. I had already set up a Facebook page for the Queens Museum, and one day I said: \u201cthere\u2019s this new thing called Twitter – I\u2019m not sure what it is, but I think it would be really great for us to join.\u201d As usual, Tom said go for it. It gained steam and a loyal following. There was no big Queens account on Twitter, and being from Queens, it was a really big passion project. It was great to see it take off and experiment with what we could do with it. After five years, I moved on to Public Art Fund, where I\u2019ve now been for almost six years. I began as Communications & Digital Media Manager in 2011, and over the years my position morphed into Director of Digital Strategies.<\/p>\n

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