MoMA PS1 has a new director. Connie Butler, chief curator of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, is to leave her post at
California and will join the museum in New York on September 26.
His appointment to the institution of Queens marks a sort of return. She worked as Chief Curator of Drawings at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) from 2006 to 2013, during which
the time she organized or co-organized WACK! Art and the feminist revolution (2008), Now dig that! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980 (2012) and the posthumous Mike Kelley Retrospective (2013-14).
She will run the MoMA-affiliated PS1 museum, which is housed in a 19th-century public school in Long Island City. MoMA has an annual operating budget of $165 million and contributes 25% of PS1’s $11 million budget.
In a statement, Sarah Arison, Chair of the MoMA PS1 Board of Trustees, said Butler
“deeply understands MoMA PS1 and our artist-centric DNA”. Glenn Lowry,
The MoMA director called Butler “a forward-thinking curator and scholar.”
At the Hammer, Butler recently oversaw the exhibition Selections from the Hammer Contemporary Collection (2023), which opened the
of the museum recently completed extension.
She succeeds Kate Fowle, who stepped down in the summer of 2022. Fowle’s three-year tenure has coincided with shutdowns and economic hardship.
of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as social unrest caused by events such as the murder of George Floyd. Fowle has not publicly offered a reason for leaving.
In a statement, Butler paid tribute to Fowle’s work in connecting MoMA PS1 to local constituencies, pledging to “continue its mission of serving the communities of New York and Queens.”
Butler began her career at the Des Moines Arts Center in Iowa before taking up curatorial positions at the Neuberger Museum of Art and Artists Space in New York. She joined the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1996 before making a similar cross-country trip to New York to join MoMA in 2006.
