The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) has appointed a new director, Jorge Daniel Veneciano.

Veneciano, who previously served as the executive director of El Museo del Barrio, will take the helm of the New York museum on October 3, in time for MAD’s 60th anniversary year. He’s replacing Glenn Adamson, who left the post in March of this year.

“I have been enthralled with MAD ever since it opened on Columbus Circle,” Veneciano said, in a statement. “The Museum has been nothing short of magical in its presentations, and I’d like to see it reach more visitors and new audiences, to share with them the Museum’s attention to the power of art in the making of worldly things. MAD is brimming with potential, and I am excited to work with its passionate board and staff in directing the Museum to its destiny of leadership among New York institutions.”

Veneciano comes to MAD with PhD in English and comparative literature from Columbia, an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, and a resume long on curation and museum leadership. Prior to his directorship at El Museo, Veneciano worked out west as the director of the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln, Nebraska. There he curated The Naked Museum, an exhibition on the Philip Johnson–designed Sheldon Museum and Its Surreal Thing: The Temptation of Objects, a show of surrealist sculpture. In the 1990s, he did curatorial work at the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs (1991–1994), and the Studio Museum in Harlem (1994–1999).