Leah Dickerman is the director of research programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. She was formerly director of editorial & content strategy at MoMA. Serving previously as the museum’s first Marlene Hess Curator of Painting and Sculpture, a post endowed in 2015, Dickerman previously held the positions of curator of painting and sculpture at MoMA (2008–2015), acting head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art (NGA), Washington, D.C. (2007), and associate curator in modern and contemporary art at the NGA (2001–2007). Over the course of her career, Dickerman has organized or co-organized a series of exhibitions including One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series and Other Works (2015), Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925 (2012–2013), Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art (2011–2012), Bauhaus: Workshops for Modernity (2009–2010), Dada (2005–2006), and Aleksandr Rodchenko (1998).
Dickerman has served on the editorial board of the journal October since 2001 and has written extensively on European art between the two World Wars. She was assistant professor of art history at Stanford University from 1997 to 2000 and has also taught at Princeton University, Columbia University, and the University of Delaware. She was the David E. Finley Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art.
In 2019, Leah Dickerman was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Education
Columbia University, 1997. Ph.D., Art History. "Aleksandr Rodchenko's Camera-Eye: Lef Vision and the Production of Revolutionary Consciousness." Harvard College, 1986. A.B., History and Literature.
Exhibitions
Robert Rauschenberg: Among Friends, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2017). Curator. Exhibition Catalogue. One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015). Curator. Exhibition Catalogue. Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2012). Curator. Exhibition Catalogue. Inventing Abstraction received the 2012 Association of American Museum Curators Award for "Outstanding Thematic Exhibition" and the 2012 International Association of Art Critics (AICA) Award for "Best Historical Museum Show Nationally". Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011). Curator. Exhibition Catalogue Bauhaus 1919–1933: Workshops for Modernity, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009). Co-curator with Barry Bergdoll. Bauhaus received the 2009 American Association of Museum Curators Award for "Outstanding Exhibition", and the 2010 AICA Award for "Best Architecture or Design Show". Dada: Zurich, Berlin, Hannover, Cologne, New York, Paris, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, (2006). Co-curator with Laurent LeBon. Organized by the National Gallery of Art and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Dada was noted as "Best Thematic Exhibition 2006" by the American Association of Art Critics. The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera: Memory, Politics, Place, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, (2004). Curator. Organized in collaboration with the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City. Aleksandr Rodchenko, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998). Co-curator with Peter Galassi and Magdalena Dabrowski. Building the Collective: Soviet Graphic Design, 1917–1937; Selections from the Collection of Merrill C. Berman, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University (1994). Curator. Exhibition catalogue.