Rancho Cucamonga (June 24, 2025) – The Board of Trustees of the Sam and Alfreda Maloof Foundation for Arts and Crafts are proud to announce the appointment of Drew Oberjuerge as Executive Director of the foundation effective September 2, 2025. 

“We are extremely pleased to have Drew’s skills, leadership and vision at the Maloof,” says Mark Nay, President of the Maloof Foundation Board of Trustees. “We see good things ahead for the organization.  There will, of course, be challenges, but the road ahead looks inviting and invigorating.”

 

Oberjuerge is highly regarded for her work at the Riverside Art Museum. During her thirteen-year tenure as Executive Director, and working with the board of trustees and staff, she led the transformation of the eighty-year old Riverside Art Museum, strengthening the sustainability of programs while embracing new art practices and most notably, establishing the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture of the Riverside Art Museum (affectionately nicknamed “The Cheech,” opened June 2022). This work resulted in RAM receiving the 2023 Museum and Library Service National Medal, the nation’s highest honor given to museums and libraries that demonstrate excellence in service to their communities.

 

Oberjuerge joins the Maloof Foundation following the retirement of Executive Director Jim Rawitsch who had led the foundation since 2013, increasing its visibility, creating a national celebration of what would have been Sam Maloof’s 100th birthday with exhibitions, gatherings, and a symposium at the Smithsonian’s Renwick gallery in 2016. In spring of 2025, Rawitsch oversaw the completion of the replacement of the roof of the historic residence, funded in part by the Saving America’s Treasures Grant Program administered by the National Parks Service.

“I am so excited to be joining the Maloof Foundation at this pivotal time, building on the excellent work of Jim Rawitsch,” says Drew Oberjuerge. “It’s been over 22 years since the residence opened as a museum, and the Jacobs Education Center is nearing its 20th anniversary. It’s a time to strategize around the Maloof’s next twenty years and determine how innovative programming can highlight the best in fine wood working, arts, and studio craft while bringing accessible and relevant programming to diverse Inland Empire residents and beyond.”

The Maloof Foundation campus is set at the base of the San Gabriel mountains in the Alta Loma neighborhood of Rancho Cucamonga, just two miles off the 210 freeway. It contains Sam and Alfreda's historic home (open for public tours), Sam's workshop (still a working woodshop), the Jacob's Education Center holding art and craft exhibits, presentations, and workshops, and the archive building housing parts of Sam and Alfreda's collection.  All set in five and a half acres of native and other Mediterranean zone water-wise gardens.

 

The Maloof Foundation campus is open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm. Tours are available by reservation, and the Discovery Garden and Jacobs Center Gallery are also open to the public during these hours, free of charge.

Sam Maloof is acknowledged as one of the finest woodworkers of our time. As a leader of the California modern arts movement, he designed and produced furniture infused with profound artistic vision for more than half a century until his death in 2009.

 

Maloof’s work was the subject of a prestigious retrospective at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery in 2001 and is part of their permanent collection. His furniture is in some of the most important private collections in the nation and the permanent collections of the Boston Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other fine museums. In 1985 he was named a MacArthur Fellow, the first craft person so named, and later received honorary doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design and other institutions of higher learning.

  

Central to Sam’s work and life is the sprawling hand-built residence and adjoining woodshop. Nestled in a lemon grove near the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California, the residence is filled with Maloof furniture and many examples of later 20th Century American outstanding arts and crafts.