MoMA Appoints Martino Stierli as Architecture and Design Curator

MoMA's announcement comes just shy of one year after Barry Bergdoll said he was stepping down from the same post after six years to become the Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. Stierli teaches on the history of modern architecture and has researched and written extensively on architecture and media, primarily, but also varied topics including modernism in Latin America and the genealogy of postmodernism. He studied art and architectural history, German, and comparative literature at the University of Zurich, where he received his M.A. in 2003; in 2008 he received a PhD from ETH Zurich.

With this strong scholarly background, MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry sounds particularly excited in a statement: "He brings an international perspective and possesses an extraordinary ability to brilliantly relate architecture and its image to its cultural context. With his solid grounding in the history of modern architecture and art, coupled with a keen interest in contemporary practice, Martino will be an effective and energetic leader."

Stierli shares the excitement in his statement: "By continually expanding its comprehensive collection, the Department of Architecture and Design has been pivotal to the preservation of modernism for the future, and to making that heritage accessible to scholars and the broader public alike. I am excited to continue this tradition at MoMA and look forward to working with the Museum’s extraordinary team to contribute to shaping the current discourse on architecture and the city—locally, nationally, and globally."

Stierli will assume the position of The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design in March 2015, the same month that will see the last MoMA exhibition curated by Bergdoll, Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955–1980.