MoMA's painting and sculpture chief Ann Temkin to step down in January 2027

Ann Temkin will leave the top painting and sculpture job at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in January 2027, ending an 18-year run in charge of its central collection.

Her full title is Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture. The museum said she will stay on in a new post as Strategic Advisor after she steps down as chief. Museum statement

That department sits at the heart of MoMA. It looks after paintings and sculptures, from late nineteenth-century modern work to pieces made in recent years. The chief curator leads that team, guiding what the museum acquires, what goes on the walls and how those works are explained.

Temkin has been a curator at the New York museum since 2003 and was promoted to lead the department in 2008, according to The New York Times. That is more than two decades at the museum in total. Eighteen of those years were spent as chief, the post she will vacate early next year.

Before New York, she worked in Philadelphia. She was hired from the Philadelphia Museum in Philadelphia, where she had built her curatorial career before moving north.

For anyone who does not follow museum job titles, the shift is simple to describe. A chief curator carries day-to-day responsibility for staff, budgets, acquisitions and displays. A strategic advisor usually stays close to the organisation but without that direct control. It is a support and counsel role, not a command role.

For visitors, this sort of change shows up slowly. You will not spot it on your next visit. You see it across seasons, in what is bought, what is hung together and what stories get more room.

What makes this stand out is the length of the tenure. Eighteen years at the head of one department means she has shaped gallery after gallery of displays. Many regulars will have walked through rooms she arranged without ever knowing her name. That is often how curating works.