Michelle Kuo Joins MoMA As Curator

Former Artforum editor-in-chief Michelle Kuo has been appointed curator for the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) painting and sculpture department, a position endowed by MoMA vice chair Marlene Hess.

Kuo will be responsible for the department’s acquisition program, the installation of the collection galleries, and the development of special exhibitions and catalogs.

The chief curator in the museum’s department of painting and sculpture, Ann Temkin, stated, “She will bring her wide-ranging experience and fresh perspective to the museum at an important moment of new thinking and initiatives. Moving from the space of a magazine to that of a museum, her outstanding record as an editor, writer, and scholar will serve her well as she joins us.”

Kuo resigned from Artforum last October, after allegations of sexual misconduct against one of the magazine’s publishers, Knight Landesman, who subsequently stepped down from his position. A lawsuit filed by his accuser and former Artforum employee Amanda Schmitt against Landesman and the publication is ongoing.

Kuo served as a co-curator of “Le Corbusier and the Synthesis of the Arts” at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 2004, and as an adviser on “Experiments in Art and Technology” at the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art in Austria in 2016.

“I’m honored to join the museum and take part in its groundbreaking and rigorous program,” Kuo said. Her starting date is April 2.

Sophie von Wunster is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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