Yukiko Yamagata Named Print Center New York's Third Executive Director

By Olivia Hart

Print Center New York, a nonprofit exhibition space, has appointed Yukiko Yamagata as its third executive director in the organization’s 31-year history, following a national search conducted by its board’s search committee. She succeeds Judy Hecker, whose 10-year tenure ended this February.

David Sabel, Print Center’s board chair, said in a statement: “Yukiko stood out for how she balances a talent for capacity-building with strong programmatic instinct and experience working in a global context.” Sabel’s citation foregrounded a leader whose career has moved between curatorial, philanthropic and public-arts roles.

Yamagata, speaking by video call, said: “Leading Print Center is truly a dream role. I’m really driven by a strong belief that a society in which creativity and free expression thrive is the cornerstone of democracy.” Yamagata’s stated priorities place public expression and institutional reach at the centre of the job.

Her résumé divides into three linked forms of work: museum curatorial assistant, foundation grant-maker and public-arts executive. Print Center’s collaborative, interdisciplinary remit offers a plausible meeting point for all three.

What experience does Yamagata bring?

Her move follows 22 months at Creative Time, the New York public-arts organization, where she served first as deputy director and then as interim executive director. Before that, her career began in the late 1990s at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as a senior curatorial assistant in photography.

An exhibition on American documentary photographer Susan Meisela supplied a durable working principle. Yamagata said Meisela views photography not as an isolated object but as a starting point for expanding knowledge, connection and engagement; that idea has shaped her work across photography, socially engaged art and public art.

Yamagata then spent two years at New York Public Library’s Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture. She next spent 16 years at Open Society Foundations, serving as curatorial and deputy director for culture and art and overseeing a $15.8 million program of fellowships and grants for socially engaged creatives worldwide.

Why print, and why now?

For Yamagata, print offers a logical continuation rather than a change of medium: she sees it as a natural extension of her career because of its collaborative nature, broad dissemination and democratic underpinnings. In her account, those qualities connect her photography, socially engaged art and public-art work to a nonprofit exhibition space.

Print Center’s interdisciplinary programme makes that fit especially practical. Its next exhibition will examine the interplay between Chicanx printmaking and fashion, the kind of cross-disciplinary work Yamagata says particularly excites her. The show offers a practical test of that claim, rather than leaving it as a mission statement.

Print is attracting unprecedented interest, and Yamagata points to three newly installed directors who cut their teeth in prints:

• New York’s Museum of Modern Art
• Baltimore Museum of Art
• Hood Museum of Art

That three-name roll call gives the medium particular institutional currency. Yamagata’s route also sharpens that context: she has moved through museum photography, foundation-funded socially engaged work and public art, while Print Center treats collaboration and interdisciplinary exchange as operating principles. On her account, printmaking has supplied the link.

Where does Print Center go next?

Print Center has just marked 25 years since opening its first physical location. Next year, it will mark five years on 24th Street. The sequence gives the appointment a useful context: a 25-year-old exhibition organization with a five-year-old home on 24th Street, now entering its third directorial era.

Looking ahead, Yamagata said, she intends to expand audiences through educational opportunities, global partnerships and further initiatives. The wording is broad, but the direction is clear: more participation and a wider network for a nonprofit exhibition space led by someone who managed grants for creatives worldwide.

The next test arrives with the Chicanx printmaking-and-fashion exhibition and the proposed expansion of education and global partnerships, turning Yamagata’s democratic ambitions into a programme that has to work in the room.