The Museum of Modern Art has appointed curator, writer, and educator, Carson Chan, as the first director of the museum’s Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment. He will also serve as a curator in the museum’s Department of Architecture and Design, where he will lead initiatives focused on ecology and sustainability in collaboration with all six departments at MoMA. 

As the director of the Ambasz Institute, Chan will develop a “robust and diverse” roster of exhibitions, paired with digital and onsite programs that address the interconnectedness of architecture and ecology. He will begin his new role later this summer and will organize and present a major exhibition focused on the emergence of ecological thinking in architecture, scheduled for 2023. 

“I look forward to challenging MoMA’s current and future audiences with new ways to define architecture in the midst of our ecological crisis,” said Carson Chan. “My vision for the Ambasz Institute is to allow MoMA’s audiences to see architecture beyond the object and to understand the ways in which it is ecologically and socially embedded in the world.”

The Ambasz Institute was established last November following a $10 million gift from the Legacy Emilio Ambasz Foundation, a philanthropic organization started by Argentinian-born architect and industrial designer Emilio Ambasz. Regarded as a “precursor of ‘green’ architecture”, Ambasz was Curator of Design at MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design from 1969 to 1976. He was a member of the Board of Directors of MoMA PS1 from 2002 to 2006 and has been a member of the museum’s International Council since 1978. 

Through a range of curatorial programs and research initiatives, the Ambasz Institute seeks to foster dialogue, promote conversation, and facilitate research around the relationship between the built and natural environment. The ultimate goal is to make this interaction visible and accessible to the world while highlighting the urgent need for “ecological recalibration”. The institute will specifically focus on digital initiatives in order to cultivate a global conversation on this critical issue, while studying creative approaches to design at all scales––buildings, cities, landscapes, and objects. 

Before MoMA, Chan was an adjunct professor at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught a graduate seminar called Architecture’s Ecology. In 2006, along with Fotini Lazaridou-Hatzigoga, he founded PROGRAM, a nonprofit project space and residency program in Berlin. Chan curated the 4th Marrakech Biennale with Nadim Samman and the next year, in 2013, served as executive curator for the Biennial of the Americas in Denver. His writings on art, architecture, and contemporary culture are featured in books, catalogues, and periodicals, including 032c, where is former editor-at-large. Chan, alongside Daniel A. Barber and Dalal Musaed Alsayer, is also a founding editor of Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment, an online resource and scholarly journal focused on the intersection of architecture, environment, and justice. He has a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and a Masters of Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Architecture at Princeton University, where his doctoral research tracks the development of the architecture of public aquariums during the rise of environmentalism in postwar America. 

“I am thrilled to appoint Carson Chan the inaugural director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute,” said Martino Stierli, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the MoMA. “Carson comes to MoMA with an impressive curatorial and scholarly track record at the intersection of architecture and ecology. I am confident that he will help establish the Emilio Ambasz Institute as a global leader in the ecological recalibration of architecture, one of the most urgent issues in the field today.”