The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) has appointed Anna Katz as its new Doris and Donald Fisher Senior Curator and Head of Painting and Sculpture, joining the museum from MOCA Los Angeles.
Katz, who most recently served as senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), will take up the newly endowed position at SFMOMA on 17th August 2026.
She will be the first person to hold the role since it was endowed by the Fisher family in honour of Doris and Donald Fisher, whose longstanding relationship with SFMOMA culminated in the museum becoming home to the celebrated Fisher Collection.
In her new position, Katz will work alongside Christopher Bedford, Helen and Charles Schwab Director, and Janet Bishop, Thomas Weisel Family Chief Curator, as well as SFMOMA’s Painting and Sculpture department.
Katz will help shape the department’s future exhibition and acquisition strategies while overseeing SFMOMA’s extensive painting and sculpture holdings and stewarding the Fisher Collection at SFMOMA. She will also play a wider role in developing the museum’s engagement with audiences and communities.
Katz brings nearly two decades of curatorial experience to San Francisco, combining art historical research with longstanding collaborations with contemporary artists. Her work has frequently explored connections between art and the social concerns of everyday life, underpinned by the idea that scholarly rigour and popular appeal need not be mutually exclusive.
Bedford said:
“Anna’s longstanding interest in writing new social art histories aligns beautifully with SFMOMA’s own vision to break down the barriers between art and life. We are delighted to welcome Anna to SFMOMA where her incredible insight, passion and work ethic will be essential to driving our museum forward and supporting the realization of our greatest ambitions in service to our communities. I know she will be an invaluable member of our team.”
The appointment also marks a return to the Bay Area for Katz, who studied as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and was a student member of SFMOMA.
Katz said:
“My love for SFMOMA dates to my undergraduate years at UC Berkeley, when I became a student member of the museum. I could not be happier to be returning to the Bay Area and joining this extraordinary institution, with its unmatched collection and sterling exhibition history. Indeed, I am honored and thrilled to be working with SFMOMA’s staff and board and Bay Area art communities at a time when the commitment to the public life of art and ideas is more important than ever.”
Katz joins SFMOMA following her tenure at MOCA Los Angeles, taking responsibility for one of the museum’s key curatorial departments and a collection encompassing both SFMOMA’s own holdings and the Fisher Collection.
About
Over the course of her 11-year tenure at MOCA, Anna Katz presented an extensive array of exhibitions—many of which were accompanied by publications—that revealed new scholarship, including Ordinary People: Photorealism and the Work of Art since 1968 (2024), a large-scale survey that reexamined the postwar art movement of photorealism and its social contexts, and With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972–1985 (2019), the first full-scale scholarly survey of the groundbreaking American art movement. Her recent curatorial projects include MOCA Focus: Takako Yamaguchi (2025); MOCA Focus: Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio (2023); Judith F. Baca: World Wall (2022); and Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor (2021). Katz’s recent collection shows include The Expanding Field: MOCA’s Collection from the 1940s to 1970s (2026), Good on Paper: Works from the Gene J. and Betye M. Burton Acquisitions Endowment (2026) and Long Story Short (2023). At MOCA, she was also the head of the Drawings and Photography Acquisition Committee, responsible for actively diversifying the collection through acquisitions of works by Asco, Paz Errázuriz, León Ferrari, Cynthia Hawkins, Christine Sun Kim, Yolanda López, Senga Nengudi, Diane Severin Nguyen, Liliana Porter, Shizu Saldamando, Joey Terrill and John Valadez, among many others.
Katz previously held the position of Joan Tisch Teaching Fellow at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008–13) and has worked as a lecturer and adjunct professor at a range of colleges and universities, including Pratt Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, and Occidental College, among others. She has served as a visiting critic and juror and panelist for a wide array of artist awards and initiatives. She holds a Ph.D. in art and archaeology from Princeton University and a B.A. in history of art from the University of California, Berkeley.
