Ann Temkin became 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: transforming them from a fixed display into a dynamic, rotating presentation. 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 the curator or co-curator of the exhibitions Judd (2020), 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). Ms. Temkin is a co-editor of Inventing the Modern: Untold Stories of the Women Who Shaped The Museum of Modern Art (2024), a revelatory account of the Museum’s earliest years told through newly commissioned profiles of 14 women who had a decisive impact on the formation and development of the institution.
From 1990 to 2003, Ms. Temkin was the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Among her many exhibitions there were 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 a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an ex-officio Trustee at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a member of the Board of Overseers at California Institute of the Arts. 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.