“The choice of Ms. Pasternak is unusual because she has never held a job in a museum. After a brief period working for a commercial art gallery, her career has unfolded entirely within the nonprofit world of up-by-your-bootstraps alternative spaces and nomadic arts groups. But at Creative Time, where she assumed the directorship in 1994, she had become well known for both her socially engaged programming and her skills in negotiating the shoals of New York City government, real estate and fund-raising, where she made artistic events accessible partly by removing them from museums.”