Mayor de Blasio will tap the head of the Queens Museum to be the city's next cultural affairs commissioner.
Tom Finkelpearl, who has spent 12 years at the helm in Queens, will be officially named to the arts post Monday, officials confirmed.
He'll run a $156 million department tasked with running the city's arts programming and supporting non-profit institutions from museums to zoos to libraries.
The pick reflects de Blasio's emphasis on the outer boroughs. Finkelpearl, 58, led a $69 million renovation at the Queens Museum - which included changing its name from the Queens Museum of Art - which doubled its exhibition space, added a public library, and even put a ping pong table in the atrium. "We want to help catapult the Queens arts scene to the next stage," he said at the time.
Finkelpearl previously worked in city government under the Dinkins administration, where he directed the Percent for Art project, which creates art installations in city construction projects. He was also deputy director of P.S. 1 in Queens.
De Blasio and his new commissioner will lack one advantage compared to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who poured wads of his own cash into the city's art scene.
