Lauri Firstenberg, the founder, executive director, and curator of LA nonprofit art space LAXART, has announced that she will be stepping down from her post in late March.

Artforum reports that Firstenberg will continue her involvement with the organization as a board member. Meanwhile, the board has begun the search for Firstenberg’s successor. Until the end of the year, LAXART’s deputy director Catherine Taft will manage the non-profit’s program.

“I am committed to LAXART now and in the future and to collaborating with the existing team, including our phenomenal deputy director Catherine Taft, during this period of transition,” Firstenberg said in a statement. “LAXART’s original principle was flexibility and today it is sustainability,” she added.

In her statement, Firstenberg indicated that she would “pursue other career opportunities.”

Firstenberg launched LAXART in 2005, while completing a PhD at Harvard. She had previously worked in New York’s Artist Space, and was also a curator of the Orange County Museum of Art’s 2008 California Biennial. Firstenberg has curated exhibitions at ArtPace San Antonio and Participant Inc. and was a curatorial assistant for Documenta 11.

Installation view of Rob Reynolds’s exhibition “Vanishing Point” at LAXART in 2015.
Photo: via LAXART.

Last year, Firstenberg oversaw the move of the nonprofit from its original premises in Culver City to a major new 4,300-square foot space on Santa Monica Boulevard, joining the wave of artists and galleries that are relocating to the Hollywood area.

“It has been an extraordinary gift to participate in the discourse of artistic production in light of an ever-shifting art community and city,” Firstenberg wrote in a statement to LAXART supporters. “Together we have produced over 500 experimental exhibitions, public art initiatives, discursive programs and partnerships with leading institutions in the form of biennials and festivals,” she added.