Helen Anne Molesworth (born 1966, Chickasaw, Alabama) is an American curator of contemporary art based in Los Angeles. From 2014 to 2018, she was the Chief Curator at The

Museum of Contemporary Art Museum of Contemporary Art (often abbreviated to MCA, MoCA or MOCA) may refer to: Africa * Museum of Contemporary Art (Tangier), Morocco, officially le Galerie d'Art Contemporain Mohamed Drissi Asia East Asia * Museum of Contemporary Art Shangha ...

(MOCA) in Los Angeles.

Biography

In 1997, she earned a Ph.D. in Art History from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. She was the Chief Curator at The

(MOCA), Los Angeles, 2014–2018. After her arrival in Los Angeles in 2014 she reinstalled MOCA's permanent collection galleries, co-organized a survey exhibition of

Kerry James Marshall Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall ...

that traveled to Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, organized

Anna Maria Maiolino Anna Maria Maiolino (born May 20, 1942) is a Brazilian contemporary artist. Early life Maiolino was born in Scalea, in Calabria in southern Italy, to an Italian father and Ecuadorian mother. In 1954, her family emigrated to Venezuela, wher ...

’s first US retrospective, and forged a partnership between MOCA and The Underground Museum. Her final exhibition at MOCA was a 2018 exhibition ''One Day at a Time:

Manny Farber Emanuel Farber (February 20, 1917 – August 18, 2008) was an American painter, film critic and writer. Often described as "iconoclastic",Grimes, William (August 19, 2008) ''New York Times''Kiderra, Inga (August 21, 2008Obituary: Artist and Crit ...

and Termite Art'', which traced the legacy of Farber's "termite art" ideology on a wide range of contemporary artists, including many from Molesworth's own curatorial history. From 2010 to 2014 she was the

Barbara Lee Barbara Jean Lee (née Tutt; born July 16, 1946) is an American politician serving as the U.S. representative for . Now in her 12th term, Lee has served since 1998, and is a member of the Democratic Party. The district, numbered as the 9th di ...

Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston, where she assembled one person exhibitions of artists Steve Locke,

Catherine Opie Catherine Sue Opie (born 1961) is an American fine-art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at University of California at Los Angeles. Opie studies the connections between mainstream and i ...

Josiah McElheny Josiah McElheny (1966, Boston) is an artist and sculptor, primarily known for his work with glass blowing and assemblages of glass and mirrored glassed objects (see Glass art). He is a 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program. He liv ...

, and

Amy Sillman Amy Sillman (born 1955) is a New York-based artist, known for process-based paintings that move between abstraction and figuration, and engage nontraditional media including animation, zines and installation.Farago, Jason''The New York Times'', ...

, and the group exhibitions ''Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957'', ''Dance/Draw'', and ''This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s''. As head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the

Harvard University Art Museums The Harvard Art Museums are part of Harvard University and comprise three museums: the Fogg Museum (established in 1895), the Busch-Reisinger Museum (established in 1903), and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum (established in 1985), and four research ...

, she presented an exhibition of photographs by

Moyra Davey Moyra Davey (born 1958) is an artist based in New York City. Davey works across photography, video, and writing. Early life Moyra Davey was born in 1958 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She grew up in Montreal, where she studied photography and r ...

and ''

ACT UP AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) is an international, grassroots political group working to end the AIDS pandemic. The group works to improve the lives of people with AIDS through direct action, medical research, treatment and advocacy, ...

NY: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis 1987–1993''. From 2002 to 2007 she was the Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the

Wexner Center for the Arts The Wexner Center for the Arts is the Ohio State University's "multidisciplinary, international laboratory for the exploration and advancement of contemporary art". The Wexner Center opened in November 1989, named in honor of the father of Limite ...

where she organized the first US retrospectives of

Louise Lawler Louise Lawler (born 1947) is a U.S. artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, New York.Louise Lawler ...

and

Luc Tuymans Luc Tuymans (born 14 June 1958) is a Belgian visual artist best known for his paintings which explore people's relationship with history and confront their ability to ignore it. World War II is a recurring theme in his work. He is a key figure ...

, as well as ''Part Object Part Sculpture'', which examined the influence of

Marcel Duchamp Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp (, , ; 28 July 1887 – 2 October 1968) was a French painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso ...

's erotic objects. While Curator of Contemporary Art at The

Baltimore Museum of Art The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, is an art museum that was founded in 1914. The BMA's collection of 95,000 objects encompasses more than 1,000 works by Henri Matisse anchored by the Cone Collection of ...

from 2000 to 2002, she arranged ''Work Ethic'', which traced the problem of artistic labor in post-1960s art. She is the author of numerous catalogue essays and her writing has appeared in publications such as ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

'', ''Art Journal'', ''Documents'', and ''

October October is the tenth month of the year in the Julian and Gregorian calendars and the sixth of seven months to have a length of 31 days. The eighth month in the old calendar of Romulus , October retained its name (from Latin and Greek ''ôct ...

''. The recipient of the 2011 Bard Center for Curatorial Studies Award for Curatorial Excellence, she is currently at work on a book about "what art does." In March 2018, Helen Molesworth was abruptly fired from MOCA Los Angeles, due to what MOCA called "creative differences."

, a MOCA board member, reported that museum director

Philippe Vergne Philippe Vergne (born 1966) is a French curator and director of the Serralves Museum, Serralves Contemporary Art Museum. Until March 2019, he was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). He was the director of the Dia Art Foun ...

had said he fired Molesworth for "undermining the museum." Molesworth has long spoken publicly about the lack of diversity and equity in art institutions and the difficulties she has encountered in mounting exhibitions by non-male artists and artists of color—in a lecture to the UCLA Design Media Arts department on January 18, 2018, she said: “I don’t think there’s any way for MOCA to not be a white space. Not gonna happen. The DNA is ''too deep''. We don’t have anyone of color on our board. Let’s start right there.” Her departure left the art world in an uproar. In a 2019 ''Cultured Magazine'' article by Sarah Thornton, Moleswoth said of the incident: “It was a total debacle." Molesworth was the commencement speaker for the

UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture (UCLA Arts) is a professional school at the University of California, Los Angeles. Through its four degree-granting departments, it provides a range of course offerings and programs. Additionally, th ...

in June 2018. Since 2019, she has been the "Curator in Residence" at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. In 2021, she curated the exhibition "Feedback" at the Jack Shainman gallery The School in Kinderhook, NY (housed in a former high school). The 21-artist show examined the history taught in American schools through the issues left insufficiently addressed in educational curricula, most notably race, and continues Molesworth's critique of institutional spaces and power structures. In 2022, she hosted the podcast, Death of an Artist, about the death of Cuban-American artist

Ana Mendieta Ana Mendieta (November 18, 1948 – September 8, 1985) was a Cuban-American performance artist, sculptor, painter and video artist who is best known for her "earth-body" artwork. Born in Havana, Mendieta left for the United States in 1961. Earl ...

, wife of

Carl Andre Carl Andre (born September 16, 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear and grid format sculptures and for the suspected murder of contemporary and wife, Ana Mendieta. His sculptures range from large public art ...

Selected exhibitions

*''

: Mastry.'' 2016, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago; 2016–2017,

Met Breuer The Met Breuer ( ) was a museum of modern and contemporary art at Madison Avenue and East 75th Street in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City. It served as a branch museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (known as the Met) from 20 ...

; 2017,

Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) is a contemporary art museum with two locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near the Walt Disney Concert Hall. MOCA's o ...

. *''Leap Before You Look:

Black Mountain College Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educational ...

1933–1957.'' 2015–2016, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; 2016,

Hammer Museum The Hammer Museum, which is affiliated with the University of California, Los Angeles, is an art museum and cultural center known for its artist-centric and progressive array of exhibitions and public programs. Founded in 1990 by the entrepreneur- ...

. Curated by Helen Molesworth with Ruth Erickson. The Hammer Museum's presentation organized by Anne Ellegood with MacKenzie Stevens and January Parkos Arnall. *''MOCA: The Art of Our Time.'' 2015,

. *''Amy Sillman: One Lump or Two.'' 2013–2014,

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) is an art museum and exhibition space located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America. The museum was founded as the Boston Museum of Modern Art in 1936. Since then it has gone through multiple na ...

. *''This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.'' 2012,

Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in downtown Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary ...

. Helen Molesworth guest curator. *''Catherine Opie: Empty and Full.'' 2011,

. *''Luc Tuymans.'' 2009,

; 2010,

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

; 2010–2011, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. Curated by Madeleine Grynsztejn and Helen Molesworth

Selected publications

*DEATH OF AN ARTIST. A podcast in conjunction with Pushkin Industries and Somethin' else and Sony evaluating the significance of women and non-white persons in modern art through the life and tragic death of artist Ana Mendieta. *ONE DAY AT A TIME: Manny Farber and Termite Art, Molesworth, Helen. Prestel, 2018. *''Duchamp: By Hand, Even'', Molesworth, Helen. Wien Verlag für Moderne Kunst, 2017. *''Leap Before you Look : Black Mountain College, 1933-1957'', Molesworth, Helen. Boston: Institute of Contemporary Art in association with Yale University Press, 2015. *Molesworth, Helen. "How to Install Art as a Feminist."
Modern Women: Women Artists at The Museum of Modern Art
'' Ed. Connie Butler, Ed. Alexandra Schwartz. Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. 2014. *''Amy Sillman: One Lump or Two'', Molesworth, Helen. New York: DelMonico Books Prestel, 2013. *''Louise Lawler'', Molesworth, Helen. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013. *''Klara Lidén Bodies of Society'', Molesworth, Helen. New York: New Museum, 2012. *''This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s'', Molesworth, Helen. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. * ''Catherine Opie: Empty and Full'', Molesworth, Helen, ed. Stuttgart:

Hatje Cantz Hatje Cantz Verlag (English: Hatje Cantz Publishing) is a German book publisher specialising in photography, art, architecture and design. It was established in 1945 by Gerd HatjeAmerican art historians American art curators American women curators American feminists Cornell University alumni Living people Women art historians People from Mobile County, Alabama Writers from Alabama 21st-century American historians 21st-century American women writers American women historians 1966 births