After a six-month search, the Museum of Modern Art has chosen one of its own curators, Ann Temkin, to succeed John Elderfield, who retired as chief curator of painting and sculpture in July.
Ms. Temkin assumes the curatorial post, considered the most prestigious in the field of Modern art, as MoMA gears up for its second growth spurt in less than a decade. After an $858 million expansion completed in 2004, the museum plans to extend its galleries further in a tower that is being built next door on West 54th Street in Manhattan. The museum is also in the midst of rethinking how it presents the history of Modern art through its world-class collection. In addition to the display of paintings and sculptures, Ms. Temkin’s top responsibilities will include planning special exhibitions and advising the museum on acquisitions. “I plan to take a broader, more international view than we did in the past,” said Ms. Temkin, 48, who arrived at MoMA in 2003 after 13 years as a curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Since the era of Alfred H. Barr Jr., MoMA’s legendary founding director, the museum has played a greater role than any other institution in carving out a canon of Modern movements under curators like William Rubin, Kirk Varnedoe and Mr. Elderfield, who is now the museum’s chief curator emeritus. Yet in recent years some art-world critics have felt that the museum should have been more on top of what was happening in contemporary art. Ms. Temkin said that one of her priorities was to ensure that MoMA’s collection of contemporary art is unrivaled. Ms. Temkin said that one of her priorities would be to “change our viewers’ experience in many ways,” especially by integrating painting and sculpture with other mediums. The Modern and many other museums still have separate departments for painting and sculpture, film and video, and prints and drawings.
Ms. Temkin called that approach outdated. She said that she planned to “reflect the way artists work today, where these divisions are far less prevalent.” She also intends to change the works in the permanent galleries more frequently. “I’d like to mix the foundation of the collection in new ways, to animate those galleries so they are constantly full of unexpected revelations,” she said.
