Marisa Sage

Marisa Sage is a curator “with a passion for emerging contemporary art and artists.”^[source] A New York native born in Queens, she earned a BFA in photography from Syracuse University and a Master of Digital Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).^[source] In June 2006 she opened Like the Spice at 224 Roebling Street “with the aim of fostering the careers of emerging artists.”^[source] It began as an art studio with classes and artist brunches and became a full-time gallery at the end of 2007. By the time the Roebling Street space closed in June 2012 she had mounted more than 65 exhibitions^[source], and from 2008 to 2012 she was president of the Williamsburg Gallery Association.^[source]

In February 2009, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz invited her to sit on stage at the State of the Borough Address as one of 40 noteworthy Brooklynites, representing Like the Spice and the other Williamsburg galleries (reported on the gallery's blog).^[source] Later that year Brooklyn Street Art called her a “Brooklyn powerhouse gallerist.”^[source]

After the gallery closed she carried the name forward as LIKE THE SPICE, a consultancy through which she worked as a private dealer and adviser.^[source] Her roles since then have included director of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in New York and galleries manager of the Salisbury University Art Galleries in Maryland.^[source]

From 2014 she was director and head curator of the University Art Gallery, later the University Art Museum, at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces. There she curated Off the Wall, on Sol LeWitt's relationship with NMSU; GEOMAGIC: Art, Science and the Zuhl Collection, with Tiffany Santos, which won an NEA Art Works award; Jenny Morgan: A Higher Ground, a mid-career survey of a painter whose first Like the Spice solo show, Abrasions, opened in 2009; and Labor: Motherhood & Art in 2020, with Laurel Nakadate.^[source] She also secured $300,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and $300,000 from the Thoma Foundation for the museum's staff and operations.^[source]

In 2025 she was the Perennial curator of Contemporary Art Month in San Antonio, with The Inbetweenness.^[source] In March 2026 she became Executive Director of the New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe.^[source]