Executive Advisory Committee Members

Chairman

Nathalie Claire Herling

Nathalie Herling has curated over 150 exhibitions and finds art and culture to be the Magic of Society. She was raised in a museum and gallery family. Her parents were prominent ethnographic gallery owners in Dallas, Texas. She was groomed and educated to work in the arts and museums field.

Her childhood was playing with Pre-Columbian figures as her toys and at times,  “home schooled” roaming archeological ruins, museums and remote tribal villages worldwide with her family. In the mid 70’s, Nathalie, was awarded a unique opportunity to Intern with the Director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts who encouraged her to work in every department of the Museo allowing access to the museums basements, libraries, and important curators who became her mentors.

She studied art history, anthropology,  and museum studies at the University of Texas where she curated her first museum exhibition and worked in the archaeological department of the Historical Society of Texas.

Wanting to start a family and stay in Austin, Texas she opened Eclectic Ethnographic Art Gallery. 12 years later she moved to New York City where she managed galleries and curated exhibitions in contemporary art, fine craft,  and ethnographic art in the city, Brooklyn, Montreal and Puerto Vallarta. During the 1990s, she expanded her technology background and became a pioneer web portal designer and specialized in bringing New York galleries, auction houses and music labels their first web presence. While living In New York she started to amase a research collection of over 200 clay cookware pieces from around the world and used her culinary anthropology background working in Colombia with women’s artisans communities to help preserve and bring fair trade clayware production to an international market.

In 2012, Nathalie came to Puerto Vallarta temporarily, to care for her Tia, Claire Idt, an artist in PV for 30 years. The experience brought back many familial memories, her love of Mexican Culture, art, and pre-columbian. She met her husband to be,  Dr David Rhodes, who lovingly built her a traditional Mexican kitchen and helped build a clay studio and art gallery in his hotel. This was the beginning of ART VallARTa. Heartbroken by his sudden death, she dedicated herself to making a 10 year plan they envisioned for the arts and the residences, she continues in his honor with a big vision.

Nathalie Herling became Director of ART VallARTA, a collaborative art incubation tank, gallery and art school for the arts in Puerto Vallarta. At ART Vallarta she curated over 50 art exhibitions and installations of local Puerto Vallarta artists. In 2019 ART Vallarta Museum received Association Civil Status in Mexico status for the gallery, art school and to open an art museum in Mexico, ARTe VallARTa Museo.

In 2018 she opened Eclecticos Restaurant

She became the founder and Director of ARTe VallARTA Museo in 2019. In 2021, with limited space and a unique opportunity to exhibit the Frank L. and Gail Rudin’s collection of early artists of Puerto Vallarta, ART VallARTa decided to grow the Museo exhibition area of ARTe Vallarta Museo and expanded to G. Prieto 164, en Colonia El Remance 15 blocks from the current ART Vallarta Art Center location. Nathalie Herling, is the Director/Chairman of the Museum and is dedicated to building, documenting, and preserving one of the largest exhibitions spaces and collections of International and Historical and Contemporary Art and Culture of Banderas Bay for the Public for decades to come.

Vice Executive Chairman

Javier Nino

Javier Niño was born in September 1950 in the heart of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico.

As a child, he began to draw and paint self-taught at the November 20 elementary school, without any teacher, only his imagination, using pencil, his notebook, and Chinese ink. Unaware of what was pictorial art and its history.

He always rested in the back of the classroom at the last desks, without paying attention to what his teachers taught, he only cared to imagine fantasies and to fill them with characters of magical colors that would become part of his unique style.

Twenty years later, in 1970, he decided to emigrate to Mexico City desirous to learn more about the art of painting. He entered the Academy of San Carlos (National School of Plastic Arts), where he learned the history of art, the great masters of classical, and contemporary painting.

Curatorial Team Member

Richard Di Via

Richard Di Via retired from the Philadelphia Museum of Art where he worked as an exhibit coordinator for over twenty years. His last show before retiring and moving to Puerto Vallarta was a collaborative exhibit with the Belles Artes in CDMX called Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism from 1910 to 1950. In 2012 he worked on Dancing around the Bride: Cage, Cunningham, Johns, Rauschenberg, and Duchamp, which was named as the best museum exhibit of the year by the New York Times. In addition to these shows he has also worked as an exhibit coordinator of a diverse array of shows including Great and Mighty Things: Outsider Art, Ink & Gold: Art of the Kano, International Pop Art, Korea: Art of the Joseon Dynasty, Léger & the City, and The Surrealists: Works from the Collection, among others.

In addition to exhibit work, Mr. Di via has published numerous academic essays focusing on the relationship between art and philosophy including “De Stijl, Neoplasticism, & Rationalism,” “Art & Phenomenology: How Our Experiences with Art Influence Our Perceptions of It,” “Is Man, by Nature, a Violent Being: An Ontological look at Cy Twombly’s 50 Days of Iliam,” “Daoism: The Evolution of a Philosophy, a Religion, and an Art,” and “Between Heaven and Earth, Parts I & II: The Medieval Mind & the Reemergence of Art & Architecture after the Fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe,” among others.

Mr. Di Via earned undergraduate degrees in English Literature and Medieval & Renaissance Studies at Trenton State College, a degree in Philosophy from Princeton University, and a degree in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania.

Treasurer

Alan Ross

Alan has over 40 years of hospitality experience worldwide.  Alan has served in senior management roles at Morgan’s Hotel in New York, Cunard Hotels, The Ritz London, LaToc Suites in St. Lucia, Paradise Beach Club in Barbados, Hotel Atop the Bellevue in Philadelphia, and The Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. He also served at the Soho Grand Hotel in New York, Hotel Casa Del Mar in Santa Monica, Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica, and David Geffen’s Malibu Beach Inn. Alan was President of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce and twice recipient of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce’s Businessman of the Year Award.

Phil Ayala

Phil Ayala, a full-time resident of Mexico with homes in Puerto Vallarta and San
Miguel de Allende, traces his roots to Santa Fe, New Mexico. His passion for
Native American art is reflected in his small but cherished collection. Phil is deeply
committed to fostering the arts scene in Puerto Vallarta and supporting the Arte
Vallarta Museo.

Phil Ayala, a full-time resident of Mexico with homes in Puerto Vallarta and San
Miguel de Allende, traces his roots to Santa Fe, New Mexico. His passion for
Native American art is reflected in his small but cherished collection. Phil is deeply
committed to fostering the arts scene in Puerto Vallarta and supporting the Arte
Vallarta Museo.
Before retiring and making Mexico his home, Phil, along with his wife Carol,
embarked on a five-year journey where they visited 50 countries in 5 years after
leaving their long time residence on the island of Kauai. Their journey culminated
in Puerto Vallarta, where they decided to settle down.

In addition to his cultural interests and professional achievements, Phil is known
for his warm hospitality and active involvement in the community life of Puerto
Vallarta and San Miguel de Allende.Before retiring and making Mexico his home,
Phil, along with his wife Carol, embarked on a five-year journey where they visited
50 countries in 5 years after leaving their long time residence on the island of
Kauai. Their journey culminated in Puerto Vallarta, where they decided to settle
down.

In addition to his cultural interests and professional achievements, Phil is known
for his warm hospitality and active involvement in the community life of Puerto
Vallarta and San Miguel de Allende.