Announcing Cathy Kaplan New Chair of Board of Trustees

Aperture announces Cathy Kaplan as the new chair of its Board of Trustees.


 

Aperture Foundation is pleased to announce that Cathy Kaplan is the new chair of our Board of Trustees. Since her appointment to the Board in 2008, Ms. Kaplan has served as vice chair and head of the Development Committee. She has also been the co-chair of Aperture Foundation’s benefit parties on several occasions, and conceived the annual pre-benefit weekend of studio tours and collection visits, which has become a highly anticipated event among patrons.

Ms. Kaplan is a partner in the New York office of Sidley Austin LLP, a global law firm of approximately 1,800 lawyers. Ms. Kaplan’s practice is focused on a broad range of structured finance transactions, including cross-border financings. She also represents clients in a wide range of art-related transactions.

In addition to her long service as a Trustee of Aperture Foundation, Ms. Kaplan is on the Board of Her Justice, a non-profit corporation that provides legal services for victims of domestic violence. She serves as a member of the Her Justice Executive Committee, co-chair of the Development Committee, and co-chair of the annual Photography Auction and Benefit. Ms. Kaplan is also a member of the Photography Acquisitions Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art. She serves on the Board of Visitors for Columbia Law School and is a member of the Advisory Board for the Columbia Law School Center on Global Legal Transformation.

After nine years as Aperture Foundation’s chairman, Celso Gonzalez-Falla has stepped down from the role. He will continue to be a member of the Board, and serve as chair of the Development Committee. Mr. Gonzalez-Falla became a Trustee and has served as chairman of the Board of Trustees since 2006. In 2012, the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville organized a traveling exhibition, also presented at Aperture Foundation, titled Shared Vision: The Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla Collection of Photography and featuring a selection from Mr. Gonzalez-Falla and his wife Sondra Gilman’s world-renowned collection of photography. Active with several non-profit foundations, Mr. Gonzalez-Falla also published a small-edition poetry book in 2011, and My Lost Cuba, his first novel, in 2013.

“I am honored to have been selected as the chair of the Board of Aperture Foundation. I believe that Aperture Foundation represents the best of what a non-profit arts organization can offer: scholarship on photography and the visual arts, education for everyone from students to practicing photographers, discovery and encouragement of new artists, and a community for discourse. I am humbled to follow Celso Gonzalez-Falla in the role of chair. Celso has been a strong and inspiring leader of Aperture through difficult economic times for arts organizations. He is a brilliant collector, with a terrific eye and a deeply humanistic view of photography. I am delighted that he will continue to be my friend, colleague, and advisor on the Board,” says Ms. Kaplan.

Photograph © Peter Freed