Makeda Best Appointed as MoMA’s Chief Curator of Photography

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has appointed Makeda Best as its new chief curator of photography, with the trained photographer set to join the New York institution in September.

In an announcement on June 2, MoMA says Best will become the next Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography, filling a role that has been vacant since Clément Chéroux’s departure in 2022.

“MoMA is one of the only institutions in the world with the platform and the commitment to photography that these times demand,” Best says in a press release. “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.”

MoMA has collected and exhibited photography since its founding in 1929 and formally established a Department of Photography in 1940. When she joins the museum in September 2026, Best will oversee a collection of more than 30,000 works. Her responsibilities will include exhibitions, acquisitions, installations, publications, and loan programs across the department, which plays a significant role in shaping global understanding of photography’s impact on modern life.

Best trained as a photographer at California Institute of the Arts before earning a doctorate in the history of art and architecture from Harvard University. According to a report by Artnet, her dissertation focused on Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner. She later served as a photography curator at the Harvard Art Museums, where her research informed exhibitions such as “Devour the Land,” which examined the environmental impact of U.S. militarism. While working at the Oakland Museum, she also curated projects including “American Job” at New York’s International Center of Photography, which surveyed 20th-century images of labor organizing and strikes.

Best succeeds Chéroux, who served as chief curator from 2020 to 2022 and now directs the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris. Roxana Marcoci, MoMA’s David Dechman Senior Curator of Photography, has served as the acting chief curator in the interim.

“After an extensive international search, we are thrilled to welcome Makeda as the new Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography,” Christophe Cherix, the David Rockefeller Director of MoMA, says. “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.”