A new director is coming to Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art. The museum announced that Nora Burnett Abrams will step into the role in May 2025. Abrams, who has been the director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art since 2019, will succeed Jill Medvedow, who will leave her position in March 2025.
Medvedow leaves big shoes to fill, but Abrams seems well poised to step into them. ICA board co-chair Bridgitt Evans led the yearlong search for the museum’s new director.
“In Denver, Nora has elevated expectations for how a museum can embed its work in its community and engage audiences. She has an ambitious vision for programmatic excellence combined with cultural and civic relevance, and we look forward to bringing that vision to Boston,” Evans said in a statement.
Abrams started at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver in 2009 as an adjunct curator and went on to curate some of the museum’s most successful exhibitions like 2017’s “Basquiat Before Basquiat.” She became the curator and director of planning in 2018 and helped triple museum attendance.
In her five years as director, Abrams increased the endowment, helmed fundraising campaigns, oversaw the opening of the museum’s second space and led the creation of a new plan to further inclusivity at MCA Denver. The museum developed a myriad of adult art programs and its youth programming (including a workforce development program for young creatives) grew under her leadership.
In Oct. 2023, the ICA announced that Medvedow planned to step down. She joined the ICA in 1998, when it still occupied a space on Boylston Street, at a time when the institution had big ambitions with few resources.
“It had a very small number of visitors,” Medvedow said. “It had a tiny staff. It had absolutely no money. And it had a building that had been built as a police station in the late 1800s to keep people out. And so it was a place that was hard to make inviting.”
Over the past two decades, the ICA has become one of the region’s premiere art institutions with a global reputation. Under Medvedow, the museum grew its permanent collection — 60% are works by women and 38% are by people of color — and she oversaw the building of its current building on Boston’s waterfront. She stewarded the museum through over 250 exhibitions, worked to establish a $60 million endowment fund and served as the co-commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale.
“The ICA embodies the rigor, relevance, and creativity which so many in our field look to as a model,” Abrams said in a release. “Jill’s visionary leadership… redefined what museums can achieve through the values of openness and care. I look forward to building on the ICA’s incredible legacy.”
