Advancing how museums connect people with art, ideas, and one another.

Dr. Charlie Garling is an art museum executive whose work focuses on creating museums that are more relevant, welcoming, and meaningful to the people they serve. He currently serves as the inaugural Delaware North Director of Learning & Creativity at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum and a member of the museum’s senior leadership team.

During the Buffalo AKG’s $230 million campus transformation and reopening, Garling helped reshape how the museum connects with its audiences. His work included developing a new approach to audience engagement grounded in co-creation and community partnership, overseeing the creation of the museum’s first institution-wide interpretive framework, and directing the vision and implementation of new environments for artmaking, digital media, and family engagement, including a play-based learning environment in the heart of the museum created in partnership with the LEGO Foundation.

Previously, Garling served as the inaugural Director of Studio Programs at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where he expanded creative engagement, founded the museum’s first public art initiative, and built partnerships among artists, municipalities, and communities throughout Southeast Michigan. Earlier in his career, he spent thirteen years as a public school art teacher while also working as a museum educator at the DIA—an experience that continues to shape how he thinks about learning, participation, and the relationship between museums and their communities.

Garling’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Art Newspaper, Artnet News, ArtDaily, and other media, and he has presented at MuseumNext, the French American Museum Exchange (FRAME), and other museum and cultural forums. He holds a Doctor of Education in Learning and Teaching in Social Contexts from the University at Buffalo, as well as graduate and undergraduate degrees from Michigan State University.