CHICAGO, IL.- The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago today announced the appointment of Dr. Joey Orr as Deputy Director and Chief of Curatorial Affairs (CCA). Previously a Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow at the MCA, Dr. Orr will be returning as a new member of the leadership team and will oversee the MCA’s Artistic Division, which includes exhibitions.

“We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Joey Orr back to the MCA as Deputy Director and Chief of Curatorial Affairs,” Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn said. “With his deep background in both curatorial activities and academics—including a PhD on performance and socially engaged works of art—the gifted Dr. Orr is perfectly matched to the MCA where he will work closely with our brilliant teams in the Curatorial, Collections & Exhibitions, Performance, and Learning departments.”

"The MCA has been my home museum since I was a graduate student. I have been educated and cared for by many important Chicago artists, teachers, mentors, and friends and am humbled to return to serve Chicago's communities. The coming years promise to be a thrill,” said Dr. Orr.

For the past seven years, Dr. Orr served as the Mellon Curator at the Spencer Museum of Art and as affiliate faculty in Museum Studies and Visual Art at the University of Kansas. Dr. Orr was hired by the Spencer to establish an innovative curatorial program, titled Arts Research Integration (ARI), that integrates the work of contemporary artists into global research initiatives and for which he secured multimillion-dollar endowment support. His most recent projects include co-curating the exhibition Black Writing with Ayesha Hardison, Director of the History of Black Writing at KU, which resulted in major acquisitions by artists Fahamu Pecou and Dread Scott; a commission with New York–based video and performance artist Janet Biggs involving the ALICE collaboration at CERN in Geneva; and a large-scale, environmentally embedded restoration work by New York–based Bahamian artist Janine Antoni. Dr. Orr’s latest book to be released from Routledge in May, A Sourcebook of Performance Labor, highlights the value of workers whose labor and knowledge have shaped and supported contemporary performance.

While previously at the MCA, he realized Chris Bradley and Andrew S. Yang’s Chicago Works solo exhibitions; the MCA’s first exhibition of Camille Henrot’s video installation, Grosse Fatigue (2013); and Diana Thater’s midcareer retrospective The Sympathetic Imagination, originally organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

By leading the Artistic Division, Dr. Orr’s position will complement Deputy Director and Chief Operations Officer Gwendolyn Perry Davis’s role. Both will collaborate to champion and expand the reach, relevance, and impact of the MCA’s artistic contributions. “We are eager to welcome Dr. Joey Orr into our leadership team,” Davis said.