MOBILE, Ala. — For Jon Carfagno, the road to leading the Mobile Museum of Art began with pretzels and gummy bears in a sixth-grade classroom in New Jersey and ran through Berlin, Austria, Houston, Grand Rapids and the furniture country of North Carolina. Since February 2023, the executive director has brought that winding path to one of the Gulf Coast’s leading art institutions, where he has put a distinctive planning system to work and, by his account, helped grow and broaden the museum’s audience.
His story, shared in early October 2025 as the museum marked its 60th year, is about a love of art that took root during a painful moment in his youth and never let go.
Two Exhibitions That Set the Tone
Visitors in the fall of 2025 entered a museum filled with two immersive exhibitions. The first, Cryptic Underwing, was a glass and mixed-media installation by Rachel Wright, a fine arts professor at the University of South Alabama. Using ceramics, glass, photographs and textiles, Wright’s sculptural work depicted the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Moths in shadow boxes lined one side of a sloping hallway leading to the main gallery, while the opposite wall held mosaics showing the Delta’s rivers and islands from different overhead perspectives.
At the center of the main gallery stood a large sculpture set against a ceramic scene on a blue wall, illustrating how moths in the Delta respond to the phases of the moon. Wright and her husband, ceramic artist and fellow South Alabama fine arts professor Tony Wright, spent considerable time camping in the Delta to study the insects, bringing lights to attract moths and observing how they behave in response to natural cycles. The Delta, often called America’s Amazon for its extraordinary biodiversity, is a vast network of rivers, bayous and swamps north of Mobile Bay, and it is not an easy place to spend the night.
The adjoining exhibition, Juan Logan’s Without Stopping, presented works from a series of more than 200 pieces called Elegies. The bold, richly colored works explore the artist’s memories and pivotal contemporary themes of race, place, identity and social mobility, inviting viewers to question, talk and consider the experiences of others.
A Loss, a Painting and a Calling
Carfagno grew up in central New Jersey just outside Princeton. His interest in German began in sixth grade, when his class studied different countries. “In the 6th grade, the class studied different countries, and when they were doing Germany, they had pretzels, gummy bears, and we learned about Oktoberfest. All my friends thought Germany was cool, so, in the 7th grade, I decided to study German as a language.” He kept studying it through college.
The turning point, which he credits to divine intervention, came after his father died in a car accident on Sept. 4, 1995. “I was a really dumb hockey player and baseball player, and had just made varsity cross-country when my dad died. Because I was a three-sport athlete, I was waived from having to take a Physical Education class, but had to choose an elective. I chose German Romantics in Advanced Art History.”
At 16, he knew he wanted to work in a museum. “I saw a painting, Monk by the Sea, by Caspar David Friedrich, painted in 1810. It captured exactly how I was feeling, trying to comprehend something I had experienced after my father passed away.”
Friedrich’s painting is one of the landmark works of German Romanticism: a lone figure standing on a strip of shore beneath an enormous, nearly empty sky over a dark sea. It is known for conveying solitude and the smallness of a person before nature, which helps explain why it spoke so directly to a grieving teenager.
His mother gave him a book about the artist for his 17th birthday. “I devoured it. I wanted to be immersed in art and wanted to share the experience with as many people as possible. Engaging with art can be a life-changing experience.”
Berlin, Austria and a Graduate Education
Carfagno studied art history and German at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where professors told him he had a special talent for the field. During his junior year he landed an internship in Berlin at the Märkisches Museum, the city’s museum of local history. There he was assigned to catalog and report on the condition of 490 works donated by the daughter of German artist Jakob Steinhardt. His director told him, “This will be good for your German, since you will have to translate this body of work for my catalog.”
After graduation, he earned a graduate degree in art history from the University of Massachusetts and received a Fulbright teaching scholarship to Austria. Because of his proficiency in German, he was given a second-year teaching assignment. The Fulbright program, created by Congress in 1946, sends American students and scholars abroad for teaching, research and study. “Things just lined up for me. My German was the catalyst that opened a lot of doors,” he said.
Learning to Connect People With Art
Carfagno’s museum career started as a curatorial assistant in Connecticut, working with a curator of American art. He then joined the education department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, one of the largest art museums in the country, working with K-12 teachers to bring the museum’s collection into their classrooms. Grants sent high school teachers to the museum to earn certificates, and many of them were football coaches assigned to teach art.
“I learned an awful lot about how to communicate to help audiences connect with art. Our team’s job is to make as many people as possible have access to these experiences, to see the world anew.” His aim was to present art as relevant and important in everyday life and to create interactive programs for people of all ages and backgrounds.
In 2005 he married Megan, who is from Petoskey, Michigan. At the wedding, her cousin suggested they visit the Grand Rapids Public Museum, which Carfagno described as the first LEED Gold-certified environmental museum. He was so impressed that he said, “If they ever have an opening, I promise I’ll apply.” Four months later, a director of education position was posted.
Grand Rapids, Hickory and a New Way to Plan
Carfagno accepted the Grand Rapids job in 2009 and led the museum’s educational programming. “This is where my combination of personal interest, passion, and opportunity intersected. Grand Rapids isn’t a Rust Belt city. In fact, it is the home of many innovative and creative corporations that have worked closely with the Museum to advance operations management systems, improving productivity across any organization.”
He spent much of his time at Grid 70, a corporate innovation co-working space. “It was the most creative environment I have ever experienced, with all these multi-million dollar corporations’ best creative thinkers collaborating together on big projects.” While there, he earned an MBA at Kendall College of Art and Design and became certified as a Level II practitioner in Amway’s business innovation curriculum. “The mindsets and methodologies that I learned in Grand Rapids comprise the systems we use today at the Mobile Museum of Art.”
His next stop was the Hickory Museum of Art in Hickory, North Carolina, a region long known for furniture design and manufacturing. “Furniture people are generally people who love art and design. I went from the contract furniture manufacturer, Herman Miller, in Grand Rapids, to the domestic furniture manufacturer experience in Hickory. From an operations standpoint, we developed two successful strategic plans, both perfectly human-scaled.”
Leading the Mobile Museum of Art
When former executive director Deborah Velders announced her retirement, Carfagno accepted the Mobile position and started on Valentine’s Day, February 2023. “I’m a superstitious Italian, and my start date at the Hickory Museum of Art was April Fool’s Day. That always bothered me.”
The museum sits in Municipal Park, the large West Mobile park long known to locals as Langan Park, and its glass-walled lobby looks out over the park’s lake and greenery. The institution traces its roots to the 1960s, when it opened as the Fine Arts Museum of the South, and a major expansion in the early 2000s gave it the larger building visitors know today.
After a series of full-team meetings that examined the museum inside and out, the board approved a new strategic plan in December 2023. “We’ve brought the operations management planning program I learned in Grand Rapids to the Mobile Museum of Art, and we are the only museum of this size to utilize this system. The operation is as efficient and productive as can be, and has resulted in a bold, ambitious programming.”
During that process, front-line staff members, including security, custodial and other employees who interact with the public, said they wanted to learn more about the exhibitions so they could answer visitors’ questions. The plan is posted on a wall in the administrative area and updated daily for everyone to see and contribute to. “It’s our living, breathing playbook,” Carfagno said.
He describes the approach with a garden image. “We have the same issues inherent to any museum, and we address those like a rose bush. Rose blossoms are what we like about our exhibits already. Thorns are the things we wish were different. And bugs are the ideas we have for the future.”
When Velders passed the torch, she offered this advice: “Museums now are more about people and communication. Now is the time to throw open the doors, get out of the way, and fly.” Carfagno says overall attendance is up, visitors represent a more diverse cross-section of the community, and more school groups are attending programs. The museum’s outreach to teachers continues; it is hosting a free open house for educators on Sept. 24, 2026, that offers two hours of professional development credit.
“Art is for the people. You don’t have to be an art historian to appreciate its impact. Everyone sees different inspiration in art. We are excited about the future and have a unique system in place with everyone on board to make it happen.”
Visitors can check the museum’s website for current exhibitions, hours and admission before planning a trip.