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Transformative Spaces: Building a New Museum

When
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
7:00 PM
Location
Online via Zoom

Registration

Free for everyone

Transformative Spaces: Building a New Museum

Wednesday, December 10, 2025
7:00 p.m. ET
Online via Zoom
Free and open to the public.

Pamela Franks, Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art, will share the current plans for the new museum building, scheduled to open in 2027. Designed by SO-IL, the new WCMA will be purpose built to support transformative experiences with art that are integral to liberal arts education, lifelong learning, and human connection.

Pamela Franks is the Class of 1956 Director of the Williams College Museum of Art. A specialist in modern and contemporary art, she has devoted her career to unlocking the potential of college and university art museums—working with students, collaborating with artists, fostering inclusive academic and public engagement, and training future generations of museum professionals. Franks’ arrival at Williams in 2018 launched a period of collaborative planning for WCMA’s first purpose-built building designed by SO–IL architects and scheduled to open in 2027. Prior to WCMA, she worked at the Yale University Art Gallery as Senior Deputy Director and Seymour H. Knox, Jr., Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, where she played a central role in a major renovation and expansion project completed in 2012, and at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas during construction and through the museum’s opening in 2003. Franks received her PhD in art history from the University of Texas at Austin in 2000 and is a graduate of the Getty Leadership Institute (2008) and the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program (2019).

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