Helen Molesworth, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles has appointed Lanka Tattersall assistant curator. Tattersall joins MOCA after an impressive stint as curatorial assistant at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. She assisted the curatorial team there on the recent, well received Alibis: Sigmar Polke 1963-2010 retrospective, now on view at the Tate Modern in London.
Prior to her time at MoMA, Tattersall was a curatorial fellow at The Kitchen and co-editor of feminist journal LTTR. She curated two important exhibitions: Let’s Take the Role and Dance Dance Revolution.
Tattersall received an MA in modern art and curatorial studies from Columbia University and is currently working towards a doctorate at Harvard University in their department of history of art and architecture. Her dissertation examines Sigmar Polke’s work from the 1960s. She has also garnered attention for her published work, including the MoMA catalog essay Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art (2012).
An accomplished lecturer, Tattersall also participated in symposia at The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in 2006 and 2007.
“Lanka Tattersall possesses a wonderful mixture of youthfulness and erudition,” said Molesworth in a statement. “She is as connected to her generation of artists as she is to our contemporary old masters. Her curiosity about the new and the emerging combined with her solid art historical foundation make her a perfect match for MOCA.”