Paola Antonelli, the Museum of Modern Art's Senior Curator of Architecture and Design, has been named Director of Research and Development, effective immediately. Antonelli's new assignment will provide the Museum with information and critical tools to evaluate new initiatives and identify new directions and unexplored opportunities, particularly in the digital realm.

Photo: Robin Holland

"As the Museum continues to augment and enhance its digital strategy across the organization, its research and development activities will foster an environment that encourages critical analysis and new ideas about the way culture, and museums in particular, live, operate, and are experienced online and in person," said MoMA Director Glenn D. Lowry.

"Museums and schools can be considered R&D departments of society, as they pursue a slower, more reliable, productive, and constructive progress that incorporates technological and industrial innovation, but filters them through a humanistic sieve," commented Ms. Antonelli. "The Museum of Modern Art can count on unique resources—its mission, its programming, its collection, its staff, as well as its privileged dialogue with artists and with its resourceful and responsive audience—to produce new experiences and discussions that will have far-reaching consequences in shaping culture, and thus will have a positive influence on society."

Ms. Antonelli's initial focus will be on applied research in response to specific questions and topics related to digital initiatives, potential partnerships, research related to interpretive materials for visitors, and modes of expansion for curatorial and educational programs—for exhibitions, special projects, discussions, and socialization.

In this role she will also monitor cultural developments and consolidate research that can be shared by various departments in order to keep the Museum at the forefront of research; engage experts and colleagues in accordance with various research streams; and convene gatherings and exchanges that will inform new models of cultural engagement that are designed to expand the Museum's mission.

As Senior Curator, she will continue to pursue curatorial activities focused on contemporary design in the Department of Architecture and Design, including exhibitions, acquisitions, and research.