NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art announces the appointment of Michelle Kuo as The Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture. As a member of the Museum’s curatorial team, she will contribute to the department’s acquisitions program, the installation of the collection galleries, and the development of special exhibitions and catalogues. She will join the Museum on April 2, 2018.

“I'm delighted to welcome Michelle to the curatorial team at MoMA,” said Ann Temkin, The Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture. “She will bring her wide-ranging experience and fresh perspective to the Museum at an important moment of new thinking and initiatives. Moving from the space of a magazine to that of a museum, her outstanding record as an editor, writer, and scholar will serve her well as she joins us in developing the collection and organizing exhibitions in both the historical and contemporary fields.”

“I’m honored to join the Museum and take part in its groundbreaking and rigorous program,” said Ms. Kuo. “It is incredibly exciting to have the opportunity to collaborate with MoMA’s exceptional team and help shape how we view modern and contemporary art. I hope to contribute to furthering our understanding of who sees culture and who makes it—and to open up the histories we tell, the ideas we advance, and the forms we create.”

Kuo was the Editor-in-Chief of Artforum International, New York, from 2010—2017. In addition to authoring many essays and interviews for the magazine—featuring artists such as Lynn Hershman Leeson, Jack Whitten, Hassan Khan, and Anicka Yi—Kuo organized special issues on new media, identity politics, and painting. She has contributed to numerous journals, books, and museum exhibition catalogues, including: Seth Price, Stedelijk Museum, 2017; Robert Rauschenberg, The Museum of Modern Art and Tate Modern, 2016; and Sculpture After Sculpture, Moderna Museet, 2014. Kuo co-curated Le Corbusier and the Synthesis of the Arts at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 2004, and served as advisor to Experiments in Art and Technology, Salzburg Museum of Modern Art, 2015. Over the past decade, she has been a frequent lecturer at international museums and universities.

Kuo is currently a visiting critic at the Yale University School of Art. She has participated in many juries and review panels for museums, presses, and foundations. In 2012, Kuo delivered the International Association of Art Critics Distinguished Lecture, and from 2005 to 2007 she was the Wyeth Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art.

Kuo received a BA from Stanford University and an MA from Harvard University. She will receive her PhD from Harvard this May.