COURTESY SHARJAH BIENNIAL
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has named Eungie Joo, a museum veteran with an international footprint, to the newly created position of Curator of Contemporary Art. She begins June 1.
“It’s a very exciting time to think about institutional practice and contemporary art,” Joo told ARTnews over email. “I think SFMOMA will be an incredible place from which to do this.”
The enlistment of Joo is a major curatorial move for SFMOMA, and one that makes sense as the institution beefs up its contemporary brass in the wake of its reopening last spring. The years-long renovation and reboot came about after a a $610 million fundraising campaign allowed the institution to acquire 3,000 new works and build out a new home with 170,000 square feet of exhibition space. SFMOMA has since billed itself as the largest museum of contemporary art in the country.
Bringing on Joo should intensify the museum’s focus on living and international artists. She spent years in New York at the New Museum as its curator of education and public programs, and overseeing shows such as “The Ungovernables,” in which only four of 50 artists were born in the United States. After leaving the New Museum in 2012, she went on to curate the 2015 Sharjah Biennial and, more recently, served as the artistic director of the 5th Anyang Public Art Project in China.