MOCA shakeup: Ann Goldstein named interim director as Johanna Burton departs

The Museum of Contemporary Art has appointed former senior curator Ann Goldstein as its interim director, beginning Aug. 18.

The Board of Trustees said Wednesday that it has launched an international search for a new permanent director. The move comes less than a week after the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania announced that MOCA’s current director, Johanna Burton, would be its new director, with a start date of Nov. 1.

MOCA did not issue its own press release about the leadership shakeup until Wednesday. When news of Burton’s departure broke, she said she timed her exit to still be able to oversee the opening of MOCA’s highly anticipated “Monuments” exhibit, which is scheduled for Oct. 23. But a source close to MOCA, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak on the record, said Burton’s last day is Friday.

MOCA declined to comment on the timing of Burton’s departure or the discrepancy between when Burton said she was leaving and the museum’s announcement that Goldstein will start in her role Aug. 18, but Burton confirmed her earlier departure to The Times.

Burton said she offered to stay until the last minute before she was scheduled to begin her new job, but that MOCA’s board, “Probably just realized that it needed to move more quickly towards thinking about the next phase, which makes sense to me.”

“I think everybody just has the best interest of the museum in mind,” Burton said, adding that she is proud of her time with MOCA and leaves with only good feelings about what she and her staff have accomplished over the past four years. “I’m delighted that they’re in a position where that kind of runway can be taken up by somebody who is as wonderful as Ann, and it makes me feel really good handing it off.”

Goldstein has a long history with MOCA, having shaped her career at the museum, beginning in 1983, just a few years after the museum was established. Over the next two and a half decades, Goldstein rose to senior curator. From 2009 to 2013, she served as director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and in 2016 she became deputy director of the Art Institute of Chicago.

“No one knows MOCA like Ann. Her deep institutional knowledge and passion for our collection and community coupled with her international directorial expertise makes her the ideal leader to maintain the museum’s momentum,” said Carolyn Clark Powers, chair of MOCA’s board of trustees. “While Johanna Burton’s departure marks a moment of transition for MOCA, thanks to her leadership the museum is well positioned for the future.”

Burton is the fifth director to leave MOCA since 2008. She became the museum’s first female director four years ago in what The Times called “something of an embarrassed addendum” to the news that MOCA’s former director and recently named artistic director Klaus Biesenbach had taken a job in Berlin. Two weeks prior, MOCA had announced that Burton would assume the role of executive director to co-run the museum with Biesenbach as part of a management restructuring plan.

Suddenly alone in the top role, Burton became the museum’s seventh director in MOCA’s nearly 40-year history. The museum was emerging from a period of instability after a series public stumbles, including a canceled fundraising gala due to public outcry over a lack of diversity in its honorees, the firing of chief curator Helen Molesworth and what many considered to be an unexpected announcement that former director Philippe Vergne wouldn’t renew his five-year contract.

Despite the internal turmoil and a significant drop in membership, as well as a COVID-19-induced closure that lasted more than a year, MOCA’s endowment hit a high watermark of $170 million at the time of Burton’s initial appointment.