Johanna Burton

Johanna Beth Burton is an American art historian, art critic, and curator who is serving as director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Burton was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles from 2021 to 2025 and Ohio State University's Wexner Center for the Arts from 2018 to 2021.

Early life and education Johanna Beth Burton was born in 1971 or 1972, and she grew up in Lemmon Valley, Nevada, near Reno. She was named after the Bob Dylan song "Visions of Johanna". She obtained a bachelor's degree at the University of Nevada, Reno in 1997, becoming the first student from the school to graduate with a degree in art history. She then moved to New York to study at SUNY Stony Brook. She served as associate director and a faculty member of the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program from 2008 to 2010. Her position at Bard College ended in a group show called "Anti-Establishment", featuring artists who, in her words, work with "novel collective relationships and emergent models of engaged citizenship." The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation awarded her a $150,000 grant in 2012 to support her exhibition "Slow Dance". She curated a 2011 exhibition on Sherrie Levine at the Whitney Museum, and with curator Anne Ellegood, she guest-curated a 2014 exhibition at the Hammer Museum on critique and appropriation. She also curated exhibitions for artists Simone Leigh and Haim Steinbach.

In 2013, Burton returned to the New Museum to become director and curator of its education and public programs, succeeding . She was selected as a 2019 Center for Curatorial Leadership Fellowship. In late 2021, she was named executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Burton was to lead the MOCA with museum director Klaus Biesenbach, but she was named director two weeks later when Biesenbach quit the museum.

In July 2025, it was announced that Burton would become director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia in November. She left MOCA in July 2025, saying "I'm going to leave it in good shape."

Personal life Burton is married to Tim Griffin, former editor-in-chief of Artforum magazine and a former executive director and curator of The Kitchen in New York.