Paulina Pobocha Joins AIC as Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art

The Art Institute of Chicago has named Paulina Pobocha as Chair and Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, just a year after Pobocha took up a curator position at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. In the new role at AIC, she’ll oversee the department’s acquisitions and exhibitions.

For the last year while at the Hammer, Pobocha served as the Robert Soros senior curator, a position she took up in September 2023, coming in very new to the Los Angeles art scene. During her time on the West Coast, she organized the Hammer’s forthcoming edition of the “Made in L.A.” biennial alongside curator Essence Harden. That show is scheduled to open in 2025.

Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Pobocha spent 15 years as a modern and contemporary art curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A survey of German artist Thomas Schütte’s work that she helped organize is opening later this month. Before that, she helped mount other major solo shows for artists Guadalupe Maravilla, Rachel Harrison, Robert Gober, Claes Oldenburg at MoMA.

Pobocha will report to James Rondeau, president and Eloise W. Martin director at the Art Institute. In a statement, Rondeau lauded her experience the field from Los Angeles to New York. He said he expects her vision will now benefit audiences in Chicago and “build on the momentum our curatorial leaders have already set in place.” The museum brought on Ann Goldstein to serve as deputy director and chair and curator of modern and contemporary art, a newly created role, in 2016.

Pobocha’s appointment comes on the heels of a major capital injection for the museum, which announced last week that trustee emeritus Aaron I. Fleischman gave a record gift of $75 million to the institution to established a new wing around late 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art. The funds will go to further revamping AIC’s exhibition space, an effort that Rondeau initiated in 2019.