Dana Friis-Hansen graduated in Art History from Carleton in 1983, spending his junior year in New York on a Helena Rubenstein Fellowship to study in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. From 1985-1991, he worked as Assistant Curator, then Curator of MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, where he supervised the artist-in-residency program and organized changing exhibitions. From 1991-1995, he served as Associate Curator for Nanjo and Associates, a contemporary art advisory office in Tokyo, Japan, returning to the States to take a position at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. In 1999, he was appointed Chief Curator, then Executive Director of the Austin Museum, Austin TX. In 2011, he assumed the directorship of the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids MI.