By Daniel Okafor

Makeda Best will lead the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, according to artforum.com. The headline names the successor. It names little else.

That scarcity is the story. Senior curatorial appointments at major museums typically arrive with a packet: a CV, a statement of intent, a publication list, a quote from the director, and a start date. This one offers a name, an institution, and a role. No timeline. No title. No reporting line. No curatorial vision. No quote. The announcement asks the field to trust MoMA on the strength of the appointment alone.

MoMA's photography department is among the most consequential in the world. Beaumont Newhall organized the museum's first photography exhibition in 1937 and built the postwar collection. John Szarkowski, who led the department from 1962 to 1991, defined an entire generation's sense of what the medium could be — and what it could not. Peter Galassi followed with a more historically rigorous, self-critical program. The department's choices have always rippled outward: exhibitions travel, acquisitions move through the market, catalogues shape university syllabi.

Best's prior work is not described in the available reporting. Readers seeking context on her exhibitions, her publications, or her scholarly writing will have to look elsewhere. The headline, in effect, does no publicity work.

What happened between Bajac and Best?

The gap between Best and her most recent predecessor, Quentin Bajac, has not been publicly addressed. Bajac departed MoMA in 2023 to lead the Musée Picasso in Paris. Whether the department has functioned under interim leadership, through redistributed curatorial responsibility, or at reduced capacity is something the museum has not disclosed. That is not unusual in the art world. It is, however, worth noting that the silence has lasted long enough to look deliberate.

What will Best's mandate be?

MoMA has restructured its curatorial departments repeatedly over the past decade, sometimes folding photography into broader media initiatives, sometimes preserving it as a standalone unit. The announcement's silence on structure preserves that ambiguity. So does its silence on title. Whether Best heads a department, a program, or something in between will shape what she can actually do — and what kind of acquisitions and exhibitions the field should expect from her.

What kind of program should the field expect?

The department's exhibition calendar shapes what the public sees of photography's recent past and present. A research-oriented curator might privilege historical revisionism. A market-oriented one might privilege canonical names. Curatorial appointments at MoMA are read by collectors, gallerists, and peer institutions as institutional signals. The choice of Best — rather than a more visible market-facing figure — tells the field something about which direction the museum wants to lean. Whether that leaning is research or canon-building, history or contemporary, will become clearer with time. The announcement itself offers no hint.

None of it is, on its own, a criticism. Curatorial vision often emerges in practice rather than in press releases. MoMA is not a small institution, though. Its curatorial hires shape the field. The photography world will look to the first exhibition under Best's tenure, and to her acquisition record, for answers the announcement declines to provide. Watch the calendar. Watch the acquisitions list. The press release won't tell you what you need to know.