Johanna Burton Leaves MOCA for “The City of Brotherly Love”

The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania (ICA Philadelphia) has named Johanna Burton as its next director. Burton, who since 2021 has served as executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, will take up her new role on November 1. She fills the position left vacant by Zoë Ryan, who became director of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles at the beginning of the year.

“Johanna Burton is among the most prominent and insightful leaders in contemporary art,” said the University of Pennsylvania Provost John L. Jackson, Jr. “She has wide-ranging experience working with artists across media, mentoring curators, collaborating with students and faculty, and energetically drawing new audiences to art institutions on both coasts. We are very gratified to bring her to Penn at a time when the arts are more vital than ever, as articulated in our strategic framework, In Principle and Practice, and under the leadership of Tim Rommen, our new Vice Provost for the Arts. I am grateful to him and to the consultative committee of faculty and arts leaders who helped us arrive at this exciting moment for the arts at Penn.”

Burton arrives to the noncollecting institution with a reputation as a stalwart champion of artists known for her commitment to institution-building and her engagement with education in a variety of formats. While at LA MoCA, she worked to increase fundraising and development efforts, adding more than twelve new trustees to the museum’s board. Too, she expanded live performance programming and reinaugurated the museum’s MoCA Focus series, which gives artists their debut solo shows at the museum. Burton was previously executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University in Columbus, serving in that capacity from 2018 through 2021. She earlier spent six years as director and curator of education and public engagement at New York’s New Museum.