Madeleine Grynsztejn, one of the key figures of Chicago’s art scene, will leave her post as director of the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art at the end of the year, bringing to an end an 18-year-long tenure that has seen a range of celebrated retrospectives and a dramatic expansion of the institution’s collection and operating budget.
In a phone interview, Grynsztejn pointed out that next year will mark the MCA’s 60th anniversary, and said that she felt it was time to step aside and allow someone else to take up her mantle.
“I asked myself, who should be on the dais in January 2027? Should it be the person who brought the museum to this moment for the last 20 years, or should it be the person who will take the museum forward for the next 20 years?” Grynsztejn said. “The answer was easy for me.”
She declined to specify what she might do next, but she said that her next project would see her “replicate my support for artists more directly on a larger scale than I can devote now.”
Grynsztejn joined the MCA in 2008 and has since facilitated a diverse program bolstered by large-scale retrospectives that have drawn acclaim. Under her watch, the museum has done surveys for artists such as Doris Salcedo, Takashi Murakami, Howardena Pindell, Virgil Abloh, and Luc Tuymans; it has also traveled monumentally sized surveys such as a recent one for Yoko Ono that had not visited the US before the MCA took it on.
Unusually for a museum director, Grynsztejn also took a hands-on approach with her programming, initiating shows such as a 2016 survey for the painter Kerry James Marshall. The exhibition went on to travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
“No one gets to lead a major museum for eighteen years who has not demonstrated a commitment to growing the size of both its audience and its supporters while maintaining the highest critical and aesthetic standards,” Marshall said in an email to ARTnews, describing his relationship with the MCA as “a meaningful partnership for, myself, the museum, and the visiting audience, alike.”
Having formerly served as a senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before coming to Chicago, Grynsztejn went on to double the MCA’s operating budget and gain a range of notable artworks for the museum’s collection.
One of the more notable gifts came from Dimitris Daskalopoulos, a Greek collector who in 2022 gave around 100 works to the MCA, which jointly stewards most of them with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. (Some 250 other works also went to the Tate in London and Greece’s National Museum of Contemporary Art.) Pieces by Robert Gober, Ana Mendieta, Sarah Lucas, Louise Bourgeois, Mona Hatoum, Wangechi Mutu, Paul Pfeiffer, and plenty of other luminaries entered the MCA holdings as a result. Chicago collectors Marilyn and Larry Fields, meanwhile, gave 79 works to the museum, as well as $2 million in funding.
Instead of providing mass gifts of artworks, some collectors gave money. In 2012 alone, the MCA received $10 million from Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson to name the museum’s theater, plus another $10 million from Sam and Helen Zell. The museum ended up using the Zells’ money to fund the creation of Marisol, a Michelin-starred restaurant.
Grynsztejn said the gifts of artworks from collectors had helped in diversifying the MCA collection. “I grew up in places where I was excluded, either by language or other means,” she said, referring to her upbringing in nations such as Peru, Venezuela, and England. She added, “I have always been deeply, deeply invested in making a place as warmly accessible and inclusive as possible.”
By way of example, she noted that the museum has an initiative specifically focused on women artists intended to remedy an imbalance that remains systemic in the US, as journalists Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns have pointed out. According to the museum, more than half of the artworks acquired since 2020 are by women. “We may be the only contemporary art museum that has mandated a 50 percent minimum women-identified artist representation across all collection acquisition and programs,” Grynsztejn said.
Not every part of her tenure has been so rosy. In 2021, for example, Grynsztejn faced scrutiny after nearly 100 current and former employees alleged that the MCA had failed to live up to pledges for change made the year before. Moreover, citing the impact of the pandemic, the museum laid off 41 employees in 2021. In a statement at the time, Grynsztejn expressed “regret” for these developments, while also noting that the MCA had made its decisions “to sustain the museum and the communities it serves.”
Yet Grynsztejn also said that the museum had actively worked to keep up its relations with its staff. She pointed out that in 2024, the museum voluntarily recognized its union, a first for an institution in Chicago. “My belief is that as long as you lean into your principles in good and bad times, everyone has clarity and knows where you stand,” she said.
Starting this spring, the MCA’s board will now lead a search to fill the director post, one of many currently open in the US. Grynsztejn will not be involved in that search, something she said was common for sitting museum directors, though she will continue to lead the museum while it is underway.
Bill Silverstein, the museum’s chair, said in a statement, “Madeleine is one of the defining leaders of her generation. Her exceptional tenure has elevated the MCA Chicago to new heights—nationally and internationally—while remaining deeply rooted in and responsive to our Chicago culture and community.”
Grynsztejn herself vowed to remain focused on artists after her departure. “I have followed artists all my life,” she said. “They are our true north.”
