Rich Cherry is the founder and managing partner at Museum Operations, a museum start-up, operations, technology, and construction management consultancy. Most recently, Rich was the deputy director of The Broad, an award-winning contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles. The Broad opened to rave reviews in 2015 and immediately joined the list of the 100 most-attended art museums in the world. At the Broad, he was responsible for the museum’s operations, including visitor services, collections management, information technology, finance, retail, security, human resources, marketing and communications, parking operations, and facilities.
Prior to opening, Rich managed the planning, design, and construction of The Broad, its parking structure, and the adjacent outdoor plaza and streetscape. To design The Broad as an innovative visitor experience, Rich also initiated and implemented a mobile ticketing and mobile retail system, as well as a mobile audio app with contextually aware content. He also designed and implemented an award-winning program for visitor service floor staff utilizing a custom online learning management system for training a diverse team of associates in security, customer service, art, and architecture.
Previously, Cherry was the founding director of the Balboa Park Online Collaborative (BPOC), a consortium of 27 cultural organizations working together to facilitate and execute the use of online technology in the museums, cultural arts, and science institutions in Balboa Park, San Diego. He also served as the director of operations at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, where he oversaw information technology, operations, admissions, facilities, security, capital projects, and more than $90 million in ongoing construction; and, as the chief information officer, director of facilities, and head of library and archives at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. He was previously the chief information officer of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and has taught New Media Theory, Web Design, and Animation in the Media Studies department at the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Rich serves as co-chair for MuseWeb, (formerly Museums and the Web), an international conference exploring the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of museums in a digital world and as president of the MuseWeb Foundation, which he co-founded to accelerate innovation in cultural practice and business. He was vice chair of the Culver City Cultural Affairs Commission, a board member of the Culver City Cultural Affairs Foundation, and a project advisor on the National Science Foundation-funded Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance STEM Program.
Before his museum career, Rich worked in technology in banking and manufacturing, and as a field service engineer. He was also a commercial diver in the Gulf of Mexico and served six years in the United States Marine Corps.