BOSTON, MASS.- Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, announced today the appointment of Eva Respini as Barbara Lee Chief Curator. Respini is currently Curator in the Department of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, where she organized the critically acclaimed retrospectives Cindy Sherman and Robert Heinecken as well as exhibitions with artists Klara Liden, Anne Collier, Leslie Hewitt, and Akram Zaatari. She will assume her new position at the ICA in March 2015.

“Eva Respini brings a combination of scholarship and a 21st-century sensibility to image-making, technology, and the role of the museum of the future,” says Medvedow. “She offers a rich understanding of contemporary art and is a creative and intelligent leader in her field. We look forward to the contributions that she will bring to the museum.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Eva Respini as our new chief curator,” says Charles Brizius, President of the ICA Board of Trustees. “Eva’s progressive curatorial vision and range of knowledge align with and will add energy to the ICA’s focus on the art, artists and audiences of our time.”

"It is a tremendous honor to join Jill Medvedow and the team at the ICA in Boston,” says Respini. “The ICA is an institution that I have long admired for its leadership in the contemporary art field and innovative programing in a dynamic building. I am eager to build on the ICA’s strength and continue to engage with artists who are shaping and defining art across the globe.”

Respini adds, “I think the curatorial landscape in Boston is in transition — with the newly opened Harvard Museums, the relatively new team at MIT’s List Visual Art Center and the MFA’s modern and contemporary wing — and I look forward to being a part of that.”

Over the course of her 15-year tenure at MoMA, Respini has organized major retrospectives as well as important thematic exhibitions such as Pictures by Women, a photographic history of women artists, and Staging Action: Photography and Performance since 1960. Respini enriched MoMA’s collection of photography with works by major and emerging artists, including Cindy Sherman, Richard Avedon, Ai Wei Wei, Glenn Ligon, Nan Goldin, and Walead Beshty.

Respini has contributed to and authored numerous exhibition catalogues, including Cindy Sherman (2012); Robert Heinecken (2014); and the thematic books Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West (2008) and Fashioning Fiction in Photography since 1990 (2004).

“During the two years that Eva and I worked together on my MoMA show, it was a comfort and a relief to rely on her and trust her in-depth knowledge of my work,” said Cindy Sherman. “She not only knew obscure details about the work but drew connections across series that hadn't occurred to me. I wish whenever anyone asks me a question about my work, that I had her on hand to give the perfect response.”

She is currently working on a monograph of Walid Raad (2015) and has served as co-author of a forthcoming volume on MoMA’s collection, Photography at MoMA: 1960 to Today (2015). She serves on the editorial advisory committee for the forthcoming academic reader Modern Art of the Arab World (2017).

Respini holds the position of Visiting Critic at both the School of Visual Arts at Columbia University and the School of Art at Yale University. In 2014, she was a Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York. Respini received a Master of Arts in Modern Art and Critical Theory from Columbia University.