Johanna Burton, Director of MOCA

JOHANNA BURTON

You’d expect the person at the helm of one of the country’s most important cultural institutions to chase notoriety – doubly so in a town that’s all about flash and self-aggrandizement. But Johanna Burton, director of MOCA, wields a quiet, stabilizing power that’s earned her admirers across and beyond the art world.  Burton is the first woman to hold the museum’s top job since it was founded in 1979, but she’s been active in the contemporary art field for more than 20 years, including more than a decade of leadership experience in major museums and prominent arts and education institutions including as associate director of the Whitney Independent Study Program; the head of the graduate program in curatorial studies at Bard; and as the head of education at the New Museum. 

MOCA is the only artist-founded museum in LA and as its director, Burton is laser-focused on the work and MOCA’s stellar program. Currently on view: the first career retrospective of the pioneering artist Paul Pfeiffer, known for his incisive multi-disciplinary work that interrogates ideas of spectacle, belonging and identity; and the first solo museum presentation of the work of Los Angeles–based artist Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio, whose materially inventive practice is informed by the Salvadoran communities in Los Angeles in which he was raised, decolonialist discourse, and an approach to ecological justice as a form of social justice.

Below, a look into Johanna’s LA:

Photo Credit Erin Leland

• The most energizing LA art experience: A trip to MOCA, of course! We have two stellar presentations by Paul Pfeiffer and Eddie Rodolfo Aparicio on view now at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA; and a stellar slice of our collection–one of the best in the world–is hanging at MOCA Grand Avenue. 
• The artist who currently defines LA: No single artist defines LA, but an incredible insight into the city’s history and character is now on view at Regen Projects. Catherine Opie’s epic love song to some thirty years of intimate encounters that could only happen here is not to be missed. 
• Favorite LA art adventure: Walking barefoot on the beach on Christmas Eve. 
• The most essential voice in art news: The artist’s. As we continue to see the dissolution of any critical platform (i.e. the recent layoffs at the LA Times, etc.), I hold tight to word on the street. 
• The last rabbit hole I went down: Rewilding with Tree People. In a good way.
• Currently reading: I’m revisiting Joan Didion’s Where I Was From for, like, the 30th time, and also just read The African Desperate, by Martine Syms and Rocket Caleshu.  (The book is the screenplay for Syms’ brilliant recent film).

Header Image: Paul Pfeiffer, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (30), 2015, fujiflex digital C-print, 48 x 70 in. (121.9 x 177.8 cm). © Paul Pfeiffer. Courtesy the artist Paula Cooper Gallery, New York