26 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} ABOVE: After 16 years at the SFO Museum, Alisa Eagleston-Cieslewicz is back in her native Palo Alto as the new executive director of The Foster Museum. displayed collection of his watercolor landscapes that celebrate some of earth’s most wild, beautiful—and usually hard-toreach—locations. Tony documents his artistic journeys, some taking years to complete, in a series of paintings large and small, accompanied by handwritten journal entries, sketches made in the field and small “souvenirs” (like dried leaves, shells, rocks) from the site. The Foster Museum boasts a broad overview of Tony’s artistic output, called “Journeys,” from his first one in 1982, following Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1879 path through France, called Travels without a Donkey in the Cévennes. The collection includes Rainforest Diaries from Costa Rica and views of volcanoes with Ice and Fire in the 1990s to more recent journeys: Secret Sites in Idaho, Sacred Places in the American Southwest and the The peaceful vibe of The Foster Museum couldn’t be more different from San Francisco International, which has the nation’s only accredited museum in an airport. There, the luggage-toting visitors are more likely to be rushing past the museum exhibits than to pause in quiet reflection while waiting for their planes. From weather delays to construction work, “something is always happening at the airport,” Alisa laughs. The Foster, a large, vine-covered building incongruously located off of busy San Antonio Road, is an oasis of contemplative calm by comparison. Solely dedicated to the work of Tony Foster, the eponymous museum houses a beautifully Sculpture Garden at Stanford University. Alisa traces her career path back to Stanford’s Cantor Art Center, which she often explored with her alumni parents. Later, as a Stanford undergraduate, Alisa joined the museum crew and helped maintain that same collection of Rodin statues. Fast-forward to internships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the De Young Museum in San Francisco, a contract job with the SF Fine Arts Museums, an MBA from UC Berkeley. Most recently, Alisa served as the acting director of the SFO Museum, where she held various roles for 16 years, before landing at The Foster in October.
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