Isolde Brielmaier

Isolde Brielmaier became the new Deputy Director of New York City’s New Museum on 22 July.  In her new role, she will oversee the museum’s external affairs and marketing as well as NEW INC, its incubator for art, design, and technology. She will also supervise media partnerships, publications, and visitor experience. Brielmaier has served on the New Museum Board of Trustees since 2016, and is currently curator at large at New York’s International Center of Photography. She holds a Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University and is currently on faculty at the Tisch School’s Department of Photography, Imaging, and Emerging Media at New York University.

Previously, Brielmaier served as chief curator of exhibitions at Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia; curator at the Bronx Museum in New York City; curator at large for the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College; and executive director and curator of arts, culture, and community for Westfield World Trade Center.  “Isolde possesses a truly unique combination of talents, affinities, and experience,” Lisa Phillips, Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum, said. “These qualities coupled with her sound judgement and understanding of the many complexities facing our field will serve the New Museum well in its next chapter.” On her instagram Brielmaier wrote“THANK YOU for all the love!! Can’t wait to get started.”

Jane’a Johnson

Jane’a Johnson is the incoming Artistic Director at Foam (Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam). Johnson will join the management of Foam with Nynke de Haan (Managing Director), in October 2021. A native of Sacramento, CA, Jane’a Johnson is currently Assistant Professor of Theory of Art + Design and a research fellow at the Center for Social Equity and Inclusion (SEI) at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). She holds a PhD from Brown University in Modern Culture & Media, where her work focused on photographers and subjects from the African Diaspora. Furthermore, Johnson earned an MA in Cinema and Media Studies from University of California, Los Angeles, and a BA in Philosophy from Spelman College.

As a former undergraduate exchange student at the University of Amsterdam, the city is not new to Johnson. Jane’a Johnson: “For me, photography is an opportunity to animate important local and global conversations — as Artistic Director, I will focus on strengthening Foam’s position as a leader, arbiter, and amplifier of those conversations and as a platform for photography.” (…) Working at Foam is a wonderful opportunity to take the next step in my career by using my talents to support the museum’s goal ‘to create a Foam for, and of, everyone’.”

Oluremi C. Onabanjo

Oluremi C. Onabanjo has been named Associate Curator of Photography at  the Museum of Modern Art New York. Onabanjo was formerly the director of exhibitions and collections at the Walther Collection, a photography-focused art space with locations in New York and Neu-Ulm, Germany. Her exhibitions there included “Recent Histories,” an acclaimed 2017 survey focused on African photography and video art. In 2020, she received an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant; she is currently working on a book about artist Marilyn Nance’s photography.

On Instagram, she wrote, “I’m excited by the possibilities this appointment holds: bringing a Black feminist and Africanist perspective to a collection that has been foundational to the history of photography; collaborating with visionary colleagues on exhibitions that expand and deepen our relationship to the medium; working in an institution frankly unparalleled in its dedication to curatorial research and scholarship—which importantly, holds critical re-evaluation among its core tenets.”