Last year, Sylvia Karman Cubiñá, then the director of the Moore Space, a small, alternative venue in Miami’s Design District, participated in the first edition of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, a New York–based training program. Now she is putting her training to the test as the first CCL graduate to accept a top post: Cubiñá, 43, is the new executive director and chief curator of Miami’s Bass Museum of Art.

She was appointed to the job, which began on October 1, shortly after word came that the seven-year-old Moore, founded by the local collectors Rosa de la Cruz and Craig Robins, would close. Under Cubiñá’s leadership, it had become known as a scrappy Kunsthalle with big ambitions, putting on exhibitions like last year’s “French Kissin’ in the USA,” a survey of contemporary French art.

The Bass is a big change—Cubiñá is going from a noncollecting gallery devoted exclusively to contemporary art to a museum whose collection ranges from its core strengths in Renaissance and Baroque art all the way to current work. But her previous experience was broad: She has held positions at the Institute of Visual Arts, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Mexican Museum in San Francisco and the Cuban Museum of Art in Miami.

Cubiñá has big things in store for anyone visiting Miami for Art Basel, including a rehanging of the permanent collection and an exhibition of contemporary Russian art. She says the institution fits her: “There’s the possibility of my growing in a place that can also grow.”

"Leading Light" originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's December 2008 Table of Contents.