MoMA has named Makeda Best as its next curator of photography, according to Artnet News. The appointment ends one of the most-watched open posts in New York's museum world.

The announcement, reported by Artnet, gives MoMA's Department of Photography a permanent leader after an extended interim stretch. Best joins a flagship institution whose photography programming has carried a backlog of postponed shows since the 2019 renovation.

What the announcement actually says

The published reporting gives readers three things and only three things: the museum, the appointee, and the role. It does not list a start date. It does not quote a director or a search committee. It does not name Best's prior post, nor does it preview her first exhibition.

That is a thin dossier for a museum of MoMA's standing. Caveat: the institution will almost certainly publish a fuller release with dates, exhibition plans, and a written statement from the new curator. Until then, the press-release economy runs ahead of the verified record.

Why the chair matters at MoMA

MoMA established its Department of Photography in 1940 under Beaumont Newhall, and the post has shaped how American audiences read the medium ever since. John Szarkowski held the chair from 1962 to 1991 and turned the department into a near-monoculture of formalist taste. Peter Galassi followed, then Quentin Bajac, who came from Paris in 2013 and shifted emphasis toward transatlantic and post-1945 work before departing for the Jeu de Paume.

Photography at MoMA is, in other words, an editorial office. Whoever sits the post decides which photographers enter the permanent collection, which monographs the museum backs, and which historical claims get re-litigated in the galleries. Best inherits a lineage the press will use as a yardstick — not her predecessor's travel schedule.

Reading the silence

The Artnet item does not say who Best is replacing, and it does not name her most recent post. MoMA's silence on those two points is the loudest part of the announcement. A museum of MoMA's size does not typically install a curator without a public CV, a quoted endorsement from the director, and at least one or two scheduled shows attached to the hire.

So either the fuller release is genuinely days away, or the institution is still finalizing terms. Both readings are plausible. Neither is good news for a department that has run on interim curatorship longer than most of its peers consider healthy.

What to watch next

Best's first program will tell readers more than any press notice. Watch the spring 2026 schedule. Watch for any rehang of the photography galleries, which have looked tired since the 2019 renovation. Watch for a stated thesis about what photography is now — color or black-and-white, analog or algorithmic, archival or freshly commissioned. The job is partly curatorial, partly custodial, partly argumentative.

Spring announcements from MoMA typically arrive in February. Expect a fuller release by then, and expect it to carry the weight a Szarkowski hire once carried. The department has staged exhibitions across documentary, vernacular, and conceptual registers in recent years. Best's first show will signal which of those modes she favors — and which she does not.

The forward-looking question is whether MoMA treats the appointment as a quiet reset or as the headline event of its fall season. The museum's last three permanent photography hires each arrived with a press release longer than the exhibition checklist. Best deserves the same.

Daniel Okafor reports on photography institutions and curatorial labor for Lens Gazette.