Kathy Halbreich, the associate director and Laurenz Foundation Curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, is leaving her post to serve as the executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, writes Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times. She’ll begin her duties there on November 1, 2017. On her new position, Halbreich said, “It’s a foundation focused on doing the best for artists. The more I learned, the more perfect the match felt as my next chapter.”

During her nine-year tenure at MoMA, Halbreich “focus[ed] on developing strategies and curatorial policies designed to strengthen contemporary programming and initiatives at MoMA and MoMA PS1, both locally and globally,” according to the museum’s website. She was also the lead curator for its exhibition “Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963–2010” (2014), which was organized with the Tate Modern. Prior to her time at MoMA, she worked as the director of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for sixteen years. There, she oversaw exhibitions on Chantal Ackerman, Kara Walker, and Joseph Beuys, among other artists.

“My father’s work was bold, rigorously and relentlessly experimental, and engaged with cultures across the globe,” said Christopher Rauschenberg, the foundation’s president and the artist’s son. “Kathy embodies my father’s belief in art as transformational.” And though she is leaving MoMA, Halbreich will continue to supervise the museum’s upcoming Bruce Nauman retrospective, which opens next fall. She will also be serving as an adviser to the museum's director until the exhibition’s start date. “I’m an insomniac, so it’s really great to have something to do at 3 AM. I think this will be an enormously creative year for me,” said Halbreich.