Ann Temkin

Ann Temkin assumed the role of Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture in 2008, after joining The Museum of Modern Art in 2003 as Curator. During her tenure, Ms. Temkin has focused on reimagining the Museum’s collection galleries, and on the acquisitions program of the Department of Painting and Sculpture. Under her leadership, the acquisitions program has strengthened the holdings of landmark work by modern artists whom the Museum collects in depth, widened its breadth with works by historical artists new to the department’s collection, especially women, artists of African descent, and artists working outside of Europe and North America, and collected actively from the new generation of artists working today.

Ms. Temkin is organizing an exhibition of the work of Donald Judd that will open in March 2020. She is the curator or co-curator of the exhibitions Studio Visit: Selected Gifts from Agnes Gund (2018), Picasso Sculpture (2015), Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor (2014), Jasper Johns: Regrets (2014), Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New (2013), Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series (2013), Claes Oldenburg: The Street and The Store and Mouse Museum/Ray Gun Wing (2013), Abstract Expressionist New York (2010), Gabriel Orozco (2009), and Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today (2008). She is currently preparing a multi-authored anthology of essays entitled Women at MoMA: The First Generation.

From 1990 to 2003, Ms. Temkin was the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her exhibitions there included Barnett Newman (2002), Alice Neel (2001), Constantin Brancusi (1995), and Thinking Is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys (1994), as well as a series of contemporary projects titled Museum Studies. Ms. Temkin is an ex-officio Trustee at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and a member of the California Institute of the Arts Board of Overseers. She was born in Connecticut, and received her BA magna cum laude from Harvard University and her PhD in the history of art from Yale University.