A South Florida native, LORIE MERTES moved to Miami in 1993 with the Jason Rubell Gallery. In 1994 she joined the CFA, which later became the Miami Art Museum, and then Pérez Art Museum Miami, where she served as assistant director for special projects and curator until 2006. After 12 years away in leadership roles at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., Charlotte’s McColl Art Center, and The Galleries at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, she returned to Miami in 2017 to helm Locust Projects, Miami’s longest-running alternative art space, where she served as a curatorial advisor from 1999-2006.