Ohio State appoints Lisa Florman as vice provost for the arts
The Ohio State University has selected Lisa Florman as vice provost for the arts, effective Sept. 15.
As vice provost for the arts, Florman will support and advise the central administration on arts and culture initiatives, priorities and strategies. In doing so, she will facilitate the integration of the arts into the university’s mission of scholarship, education and service. She will support greater collaboration between arts entities on Ohio State’s campuses and the communities that the university serves. Her efforts will link Ohio State to arts organizations across Ohio and the nation as well as around the world.
“Lisa steps into this role at an exciting time for the arts at our university, with the recent appointment of Gaëtane Verna as the next executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts, the completion of new facilities in our Arts District, and the arrival of new faculty leaders in our arts departments,” said Ohio State Executive Vice President and Provost Melissa Gilliam.
Since 2021, Florman has served as associate dean of interdisciplinary studies and community engagement in the College of Arts and Sciences. In this role, she provides strategic oversight to the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise, the Humanities Centers Consortium, the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, and Urban Arts Space. For the seven years prior, she served as chair in the Department of History of Art. Previously, she held progressive roles since joining the university in 1994 as assistant professor.
“Lisa is an arts historian and has a deep commitment to the arts,” Gilliam said. “She has a track record of working with faculty, staff, and students. She also brings leadership in diversity, inclusion and making the arts accessible.”
Florman works at the intersection of art history and philosophical aesthetics, publishing books about competing understandings of the classical in modern art and the invention of abstraction in the twentieth century. She has been an invited lecturer at museums and universities around the world.
“Lisa has taught a range of classes, from introductory level, general education courses to honors classes and graduate seminars, and she is a recipient of the Alumni Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award,” Gilliam said. “We congratulate Lisa as she transitions into her next role at Ohio State.”
