The Bronx Museum of the Arts has selected Shamim M. Momin as its next director and chief curator. She will take on the role starting in September. Momin succeeds Klaudio Rodriguez, who left the post last year to take the helm at the Museum of Fine Arts in St Petersburg, Florida.
Momin served as the director of curatorial affairs at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle from 2018 to 2024. While there, she curated the group exhibition In Plain Sight, which highlighted clandestine artist histories, and oversaw commissions by luminaries like Hank Willis Thomas, Diana Al-Hadid and Tala Madani.
Momin is also a co-founder of Los Angeles Nomadic Division, a nonprofit that focuses on site-specific public art. She organised more than 100 commissions by some 300 artists during her tenure there. In addition, Momin has a long-standing relationship with the Whitney Museum of American Art, serving as an associate curator, then director of its former Midtown Altria location, as well as curating its 2004 and 2008 biennial exhibitions.
As the Bronx Museum undergoes a $42.9m renovation and expansion, scheduled to open next year, the need for a leader to navigate the institution’s future moved to the forefront of the search committee’s priorities.
“The Bronx Museum has always been at the forefront of championing under-represented voices,” Joseph Mizzi, the museum’s board chair, said in a statement. ”I am fully confident that Shamim will uphold that legacy and is uniquely qualified to expand and enhance the impact of the museum and its mission.”
In an interview with Artnews, Momin said that she sees the Bronx Museum as “aligned with the practice and values that I believe most in”, providing her an opportunity “to build community, and organisational outreach and presence in thinking about very different constituencies and communities”.