Taras W. Matla

Taras W. Matla is Director of the University of Maryland Art Gallery. At the Art Gallery, he oversees its day-to-day operation and a permanent collection of nearly 5,000 works of art. During Matla's tenure, the permanent collection has doubled in size, with a broader emhasis on artist diversity and cultural representation. He has also curated and coordinated several key exhibitions at the Art Gallery, including: Christopher Bartel: The Skinwalker Ranch Portfolio (2021), Observations: Selected Works by Jamilah Sabur (2020), Pause, Play: Selected Works by Jonathan Monaghan (2020), Lia Halloran: The Same Sky Overarches Us All (2019), Here and Now: Recent Acquisitions (2019), Glances From Infinity (2018), Laid, Placed, and Arranged (2017), Wynn Bullock: Revelations (2016), Process It All: Selected Works by Chip Lord (2014), and John Baldessari: Four Short Films, 1972-1973 (2014).

In addition to his curatorial work, Matla established the Visiting Artist Lecture-Project (VALP) initiative in 2015. This initative's aim is to bring emerging and mid-career artists from diverse backgrounds to UMD, thereby allowing them to work collaboratively with the Art Gallery, students, faculty, and surrounding community on a site-specific project on campus. Past participants include Kim Schoenstadt, Christine Nguyen, Rachel Hayes, and Carlos Martiel. In 2016, he brought the Art+Feminism Wikipedia Edit-a-thon to UMD. Held annually in March (Women's History Month) and co-organized with the Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture, this event emphasizes direct student involvement and activism in order to close information gaps related to gender, feminism, and the arts on Wikipedia. Matla is also a Research Affiliate of Harvard University's Galileo Project. 

Prior to joining the University of Maryland Art Gallery, Matla worked in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as in the Communications and Corporate Relations department at The J. Paul Getty Trust. A native of Los Angeles, California, Matla holds a BFA in Printmaking from California State University, Long Beach and an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from California Institute of the Arts. Follow him on Twitter @curatormatla.