Curator Katy Siegel Leaves Baltimore Museum of Art for SF MoMA

Katy Siegel, senior programming and research curator at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) since 2016, is leaving that institution to accept the post of research director of special program initiatives at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MoMA). She will inaugurate the role, which was created with her in mind by former BMA colleague Christopher Bedford, who earlier this year decamped as the director of the Baltimore institution to lead SF MoMA. At the San Francisco museum, where she’ll begin working in September, Siegel will “develop scholarly research related to modern and contemporary art and SF MoMA’s collections to help generate new special exhibitions and projects,” according to a press release issued by the institution.

Siegel is currently the chair of Modern American Art at New York’s Stony Brook University. Prior to arriving at the BMA, she served as curator at large at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. She has additionally held roles at New York’s Hunter College, Princeton University, Yale University, and University of Memphis. While at the BMA, she co-curated a number of major exhibitions, including those variously centering on the work of Mark Bradford, Joan Mitchell, and Jack Whitten, as well as “Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art.” She is a former editor in chief of Art Journal and a contributing editor at Artforum.

Of note, SF MoMA also announced the hiring of Erin O’Toole as curator and head of photography. O’Toole, who has been with SF MoMA for fifteen years, spent the last two years filling the head of photography role on an interim basis. During her time at the institution, she organized exhibitions by photographers including April Dawn Alison (giving the previously unknown photographer her first museum show), Hal Fischer, Anthony Hernandez, Donna-Lee Phillips, and Lew Thomas.

“Erin brings deep institutional knowledge, wide-ranging expertise and a proven track record of featuring artists and genres of photography previously overlooked,” said Bedford. “Katy brings a breadth of experience and long-term dedication to telling a more expansive art history and connecting with audiences in new ways. I look forward to the new future we’ll invent with them, SF MoMA’s staff and community.”

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