Whitney Museum Hires Chicago Curator Nolan Jimbo

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has hired Nolan Jimbo as its Arnhold Associate Curator, according to ArtNews. He starts on 16 November.

Curators research, select and install the works that go on show, and they help decide what a museum adds to its collection. An associate curator is usually a mid-level post, sitting below the senior curators who lead departments.

Jimbo is currently an assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, known as MCA Chicago. He joined the museum in 2021 as a curatorial fellow, a training post for early-career curators. He held the title Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow there.

At MCA Chicago, he organised solo exhibitions for the artists Gregory Bae, Kenzi Shiokava and Mike Cloud. He also organised two shows from the museum's own collection, Interiors in 2022 and Endless in 2023. He co-directed the museum's DNA Research Initiative, and he moderated a public roundtable on the life and work of Bae.

Before Chicago, Jimbo held curatorial jobs at MASS MoCA, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, and at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas. He also wrote texts on several artists for the catalogue of the 2024 Whitney Biennial. The catalogue is the book that accompanies the exhibition, and the Biennial is the Whitney's survey of American art, held every two years.

The role was most recently held by Rujeko Hockley, according to ArtNews. The Whitney is led by its director, Scott Rothkopf, who took the post in November 2023. Rothkopf first joined the museum as a curator in 2009, according to the Whitney's own biographies.

For visitors, the change will not show up until the new curator begins work in November. Hiring announcements like this one set out who will look after the museum's shows and collection over the coming years.