The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego has announced that its next director and chief executive will be Brett Littman. He will begin in the role in October.
The fifth director in the institution’s 85-year history, Littman succeeds Kathryn Kanjo, who departed the MCA San Diego after 15 years in January to lead the newly merged UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art. Littman was chosen after a six-month national search.
“Brett is a visionary museum leader whose experience spans some of the country’s most respected contemporary art institutions,” MCA San Diego board president Maryanne Pfister said in a statement. “His ability to balance artistic ambition with organizational leadership, combined with his past personal connection to San Diego, makes him exceptionally well-positioned to guide the Museum into its next era.”
An alumnus of the University of California, San Diego, Littman has spent his three-decade career in New York, having a string of important institutional posts. After development roles at Brooklyn Center for the Arts and UrbanGlass, he served as co-executive director of the paper-making nonprofit Dieu Donné, deputy director of MoMA PS1, executive director at the Drawing Center, and director of the Noguchi Museum.
During his 11-year tenure at the Drawing Center, Littman recruited 15 board members and oversaw an $11 million capital campaign to renovate and expand its landmarked space in SoHo. At the Noguchi, he doubled the institution’s budget to $9 million in five years and restructured the organization so that it could achieve $8 million in annual revenue.
After departing the Noguchi in 2023, Littman founded Shakkei Consultants to advise museums, foundations, and estates on strategy, governance, fundraising, and public engagement, among other areas. He also spent a year as senior director for the Americas for the design-focused Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
“My connection to San Diego is deeply personal,” Littman said in a statement. “The exhibitions and public programs at the Museum were foundational to my understanding of contemporary art when I was a student at UCSD and in many ways led to my eventual career in the field. The opportunity to return to an institution that shaped my own intellectual and professional growth is incredibly meaningful.”
The MCA San Diego reopened in 2022 after a three-year closure as part of a $105 million expansion that doubled its overall footprint and quadrupled its gallery space. Ahead of the expansion, which began in 2014 and was done by Selldorf Architects, the museum also grew its permanent collection, which now includes more than 5,700 works made after 1950.
“The opportunity ahead is to translate this extraordinary physical transformation into broader civic, artistic, educational, and philanthropic impact,” Littman added in his statement. “MCASD has the chance to define itself as a museum that is not only unique within Southern California, but useful, engaged, and essential to interpreting contemporary culture and the future of this region.”
