Board Chair Transition

The Cleveland Museum of Art’s board of trustees is thrilled to welcome Virginia “Gini” Barbato as its new chair. A trustee since 2003, Barbato succeeds Ellen Stirn Mavec, whose dynamic leadership advanced several of the museum’s most significant strategic and philanthropic initiatives.

President of the Eric and Jane Nord Family Fund, Barbato is widely recognized for her leadership in arts and philanthropic organizations throughout Cleveland and beyond. She currently serves on the boards of the Frick Collection, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Nord Family Foundation, and Ideastream Public Media. At the CMA, she is the immediate past chair of the Collections Committee, where she has been a member since 2004. She has also served on the Finance and Executive Committees, as treasurer of the Womens Council, and as chair of the Education Advisory Committee.

Barbato and her family have long provided critical support for major initiatives at the museum. Notably, she and her husband, Randy, endowed the CMA’s deputy director and chief curator position. Additionally, her family, through the Eric and Jane Nord Family Fund, founded by her parents, endowed three key conservation roles: the Eric and Jane Nord Chief Conservator, the Eric and Jane Nord Conservation Scientist, and the Eric and Jane Nord Conservation Science Fellow. These generous gifts build upon her family’s incredible legacy of philanthropy to the museum, including naming the CMA’s conservation suite, funding the CMA’s Community Arts Center, and supporting the Nord Family Greenway on the CMA’s fine arts campus.

Her past service includes board roles with Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Opera, Vocational Guidance Services, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, as well as visiting committee positions at Case Western Reserve University’s Mandel School and College of Arts and Sciences.

Mavec’s tenure as chair set fundraising records for the CMA. As part of her “Chair’s Challenge,” Mavec, through the Kelvin and Eleanor Smith Foundation, provided transformational support for four key areas of the CMA’s strategic plan: exhibitions, endowed positions, the renovations of the Horace Kelley Art Foundation North Lobby and the Susan M. Kaesgen Education Gallery and Lobby, and the landscape master plan for the fine arts campus. The CMA is profoundly grateful to Mavec for her leadership, philanthropy, and lifelong commitment to the museum. She continues to serve as a member of the board of trustees.