Gabriel Ritter is Director of the UCSB Art, Design & Architecture Museum and Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art & Architecture. Dr. Ritter holds a Doctorate in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he also earned his Master’s in Art History. While academically Dr. Ritter specializes in avant-garde visual art practices of modern/contemporary Japan, for the past decade he has been a curator of contemporary art within a collecting, encyclopedic museum context at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art. There, Dr. Ritter was responsible for growing and diversifying the permanent collections, with increased focus on female artists, artists of color, and those who openly identify as LGBTQI+. In addition to his research, teaching, and curating, Dr. Ritter is focused on growing the AD&A Museum into a vital part of student and faculty life, as well as the cultural life of those in the surrounding Goleta and Santa Barbara communities.