Ann Temkin to leave MoMA after nearly two decades; will lead preparations for the museum’s 100th anniversary

Ann Temkin will step down in January as chief curator of painting and sculpture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), after nearly two decades in one of the most influential roles in the modern and contemporary art world, as Artnet News reports. The search for her successor at the helm of the museum’s largest department has begun immediately.

Temkin, the first woman to lead the department, signed some of the biggest exhibitions of recent years: “Picasso Sculpture” (2015), “Matisse: The Red Studio” (2022) and the Marcel Duchamp retrospective, the most visited exhibition of this year at the museum. Her tenure was marked by breaking down rigid divisions between different mediums and enriching the museum’s narrative with women and BIPOC artists, according to Artnet News.

In 2024, Marlon Mullen became the first artist with a developmental disability to receive a solo exhibition at MoMA. “Abstract Expressionist New York” (2010) brought together some 250 works drawn entirely from the museum’s collection, while the Barnett Newman retrospective (2002) remains the reference study of his art. Temkin began her MoMA career as a curatorial assistant, then spent 16 years at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (1987–2003), where she curated exhibitions of Joseph Beuys, Constantin Brâncuși, Alice Neel and Barnett Newman.

The departure is not a retirement: next year Temkin takes on the role of strategic adviser who will lead the plans for the museum’s 100th anniversary celebrations in 2029. “MoMA’s centenary will naturally be a moment of remembrance, but above all an opportunity to look forward and open the imagination,” she said in the museum’s announcement, quoted by Artnet News.

Born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1959, Temkin graduated magna cum laude from Harvard (1981) and earned her doctorate in art history at Yale (1991). After returning to MoMA in 2003, she took over the department in 2008 and began transforming the collection galleries from medium-separated spaces into integrated, fluid presentations with multiple perspectives.