Museum of Modern Art Names Lou Fernandes as New CIO

The Museum of Modern-day Art has tapped Lou Fernandes, a veteran endowment financial investment head, as its CIO, helpful straight away.

Fernandes served for six a long time at New York College as its endowment’s running director of investments. In advance of that, he was at San Francisco-based Hall Capital Partners, an outsourced chief investment officer.

The storied MoMA, located in Midtown Manhattan, properties many legendary will work of art, together with paintings by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Jasper Johns. The museum, launched in 1929 by substantial-modern society sorts, to start with gained large observe with a displaying of Picasso’s operates. Nowadays, it attributes a who’s-who of rich individuals as trustees, ranging from David Rockefeller Jr. to Sid Bass to Ronald Lauder.

“Lou delivers a lot more than two many years of finance and expenditure working experience to MoMA, like experience in constructing teams, developing and controlling investment portfolios and partnering with managers throughout asset courses,” stated James Gara, the museum’s main functioning officer. Fernandes will take care of the diversified expenditure portfolio for MoMA’s endowment, pension and retirement plan.

Fernandes, educated as a Grasp of Business enterprise Administration and a Master of Arts in schooling at Stanford College, is a CFA constitution holder and graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Davis. He replaces Tony Wai, who is now CIO at fiscal company BVC Fiscal. Wai was at MoMA for 19 years in the investment decision store, the very last five as CIO, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The MoMA experienced more than $2 billion in internet belongings as of mid-2022, the stop of its past fiscal calendar year. Like so several establishments, the museum has observed its investments take a pounding in the current turbulent marketplaces. Its expenditure portfolio shrank 9.5% between June 2021 and June 2022. The stocks section of its holdings went down by 42%.

But it proceeds to acquire amazing backing: In October, a foundation established by the late CBS founder William Paley, the museum’s former chairman and president, auctioned off a assortment of masterpieces exhibited at MoMA with the target of raising some $70 million to enhance the museum’s digital presence.

 

Linked Stories:

College of Pittsburgh Names Jeffer Choudhry CIO

 

Rockefeller University Names Paula Volent New CIO

 

Must Universities Shell out Additional From Their Endowments?

 

Tags: Lou Fernandes, Museum of Modern Art, New York University, Pablo Picasso, William Paley