Kate Fowle Will Step Down as Director of MoMA PS1 – RisePEI

Kate Fowle, the director of MoMA PS1, one of many county’s main museums for modern artwork, stated she is going to step down from her function after lower than three years. Her final day will probably be July 15.

In an electronic mail despatched to the museum’s employees on Friday afternoon that was reviewed by ARTnews, Fowle didn’t give a purpose for her surprising departure, saying solely that she would proceed to arrange the establishment’s extremely anticipated exhibition of Daniel Lind-Ramos on account of open in April 2023.

Fowle stated that the museum’s interim management would encompass deputy director Jose Ortiz, director of curatorial affairs Ruba Katrib, and director of exterior affairs Molly Kurzius, together with the museum’s board chair Sarah Arison and MoMA director Glenn Lowry.

Situated within the Queens neighborhood of Lengthy Island Metropolis, MoMA PS1 is an affiliated establishment with the Museum of Fashionable Artwork in New York.

Previous to becoming a member of PS1 in 2019, Fowle had served because the chief curator of the Storage Museum of Up to date Artwork in Moscow for six years, the place she helped open its Rem Koolhaas–designed constructing in 2015, launched the Storage Triennial of Russian Up to date Artwork, and have become identified for an progressive program of exhibitions that included showings for artists like Louise Bourgeois, Olga Chernysheva, Urs Fischer, Rashid Johnson, Irina Korina, Robert Longo, Anri Sala, and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Fowle took over the function of director at PS1 in September 2019, which had been left vacant for over a 12 months after Klaus Biesenbach left to run the Museum of Up to date Artwork in Los Angeles. (He has since left that place.)

Fowle’s departure from PS1 is surprising. A New York Instances profile of her, published in April, touted her “priorities as the brand new chief of the Lengthy Island Metropolis establishment: to strengthen the reference to its neighbors in Western Queens and North Brooklyn, to make PS1 a hub of neighborhood exercise via artwork, to lean into the museum’s progressive roots and to offer the establishment an identification distinct from MoMA’s.”

Simply weeks in the past, PS1 hosted a serious gala, its first because the onset of the pandemic, at its dwelling, a former college in Lengthy Island Metropolis. The glitzy affair was attended by Mayor Eric Adams, collector and former MoMA PS1 board chair Agnes Gund, and artists Rashid Johnson and Deana Lawson.

One other latest departure from PS1 is Hannah Howe, director of improvement since February 2021, who left to change into deputy chief improvement officer for particular person giving on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork.

Within the message to employees, Fowle wrote, “I would like you to know that I’ve deep respect and admiration for you all, and that I’m extremely happy with all of the work we’ve achieved collectively. You’re the dream workforce and I’m ceaselessly in awe of the kindness, dedication, and care that you just present to one another, to me, and to all of the artists and their communities and companions that we work with. I very a lot sit up for seeing how our artist-centered and community-driven imaginative and prescient evolves.”

In a press release despatched to ARTnews, Arison stated, “Kate Fowle is a gifted curator and director who has led MoMA PS1 via the extraordinary challenges of the final three years to change into a extra resilient and financially steady establishment. Kate has piloted progressive fashions of neighborhood engagement, diversified the makes use of of the constructing and its courtyard to attach extra deeply with Queens and New York communities, and strengthened PS1’s dedication and function as an artist-centric establishment. All of us have a lot admiration and respect for Kate—together with her unbelievable work ethic and inventive imaginative and prescient. We’re very grateful for every little thing she has contributed to PS1, and the work she has performed to construct a vivid future for the establishment. We want Kate continued success within the subsequent function she chooses.”