In 1974, Ricardo Viera stepped into the role, serving as LUAG's director for 44 years. Under Viera, the collection grew from 2,500 objects to more than 15,000, including a nationally recognized collection of Latin American works.

“The ’70s were important because that’s when Ricardo came on board as director and really shifted the tone within the organization toward a kind of professionalization of museum practice,” Wonsidler says. “The number of galleries on campus expanded, and LUAG began to think of itself as a museum instead of just a campus art gallery.”

Viera connected Lehigh’s exhibition and gallery program to the American Association of Museums—today known as the American Alliance of Museums—which is the accrediting body for museums. The gallery is currently pursuing museum accreditation under the alliance. Accreditation makes an organization more competitive for grants, can lead to partnership and lending opportunities with other museums and enhances both the museum and university’s standing with stakeholders and the community.

As a Cuban immigrant, Viera wanted to expand LUAG’s collection to be inclusive of Latin American culture. Viera arrived in the United States in the early 1960s at the age of 17 through “Operation Peter Pan,” which transported unaccompanied Cuban minors to resettle in the United States, given the perceived threat of the growth of communism.

He focused on artworks that were accessible for a small university with a limited acquisition budget, Wonsidler says. They included photographs, works on paper and videography.

“When Ricardo arrived, he talked about how there were 2,500 works in the collection and one photograph that he said was of Asa Packer,” Wonsidler says. “Ricardo was interested in building a collection that was diverse and took into consideration more facets of the global experience of art making.”

As a museum director, Viera didn’t back away from showing controversial artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano and Larry Fink, whose “Forbidden Pictures” featured satirical photos of leaders in the George W. Bush administration.

Viera also believed in utilizing LUAG’s art as a teaching collection and taught classes in museum and curatorial studies. Whenever he talked about the educational aspect of LUAG’s work, he would become particularly enthusiastic.

“We don’t collect objects. We collect ideas,” Viera said during an interview in 2017. “We are not here to preach one thing, to interpret things one way. We are here to expose [people] to things that in our judgment have a certain kind of quality.”