Makeda Best Appointed MoMA’s Next Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography
By Darren Smith, Arts Reporter
June 15, 2026
In a landmark appointment that signals a bold new chapter for one of the world’s most influential photography collections, The Museum of Modern Art has named Makeda Best as its next Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography. Best, a distinguished curator, scholar, and photographer with deep roots in American visual culture, will join MoMA in September 2026.
This move comes after an extensive international search and fills a position vacant since Clément Chéroux departed in 2022 to lead the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. In the interim, Roxana Marcoci, MoMA’s David Dechman Senior Curator of Photography, has guided the department with distinction. MoMA’s photography holdings—numbering more than 30,000 works—form one of the most comprehensive archives of the medium’s evolution since the museum’s founding in 1929.
Best arrives from the Oakland Museum of California, where she has served as Deputy Director of Curatorial Affairs since 2023, overseeing curatorial strategy, collections, exhibitions, and public programs. Her appointment underscores MoMA Director Christophe Cherix’s commitment to visionary leadership that bridges scholarship, social relevance, and audience engagement. “After an extensive international search, we are thrilled to welcome Makeda as the new Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography,” Cherix stated. “Makeda’s distinguished career as a curator, scholar, and institutional leader—spanning major collections at Harvard and Oakland—brings a fresh vision to the field. She champions photography’s singular power to connect with audiences through storytelling, seamlessly crossing boundaries into sociology, environmentalism, performance art, labor, and civic life.”
A San Francisco native, Best trained as a photographer at the California Institute of the Arts before earning her M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University in the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Her doctoral work centered on Alexander Gardner, the pioneering Civil War photographer, laying the foundation for a career that interrogates how images shape historical memory and social consciousness. At the Harvard Art Museums, where she served as the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography, Best curated landmark exhibitions including Devour the Land: War and American Landscape Photography Since 1970 and Time Is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America. These shows exemplified her ability to weave rigorous historical analysis with urgent contemporary dialogues.
More recently, Best guest-curated American Job: 1940–2011 at the International Center of Photography in New York, a compelling survey of labor photography that illuminated organizing, strikes, and working-class narratives across decades. Her scholarship extends to the award-winning book Elevate the Masses: Alexander Gardner, Photography and Democracy in 19th Century America, which earned the 2022 Paris Photo–Aperture Photography Catalogue of the Year Award. Best’s practice consistently expands representation in museum collections, foregrounding voices and perspectives historically marginalized in the photographic canon.
MoMA has long been a powerhouse in photography, from early champions like Edward Steichen and Beaumont Newhall to groundbreaking presentations of modern masters. Under Best’s leadership, the department is poised to deepen its engagement with photography’s intersections with pressing global issues—climate, identity, technology, and democracy—while stewarding its unparalleled holdings. “MoMA is one of the only institutions in the world with the platform and the commitment to photography that these times demand,” Best remarked. “Photography is vital to understanding who we are as a society. I look forward to pursuing new research, and to helping audiences develop the visual and critical tools needed to navigate this complex world.”
Best’s arrival also reflects broader shifts in the field toward greater inclusivity and interdisciplinary thinking. As the second major curatorial appointment under Cherix, following Jodi Hauptman in Drawings and Prints, it positions MoMA to remain at the forefront of lens-based art in an era of rapid technological and cultural change.
Discover more about Makeda Best’s visionary work and MoMA’s transformative photography program by visiting the official announcement and planning your next visit to the museum. Don’t miss the opportunity—explore MoMA’s collections online today and stay tuned for groundbreaking exhibitions ahead. Visit MoMA.org to learn more and support the arts.
Cover image has been Ai generated
