Johanna Burton is Daniel W. Dietrich II, Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania.

Burton has been active in the contemporary art field for nearly 20 years, including more than a decade of leadership experience in major museums and prominent arts and education institutions. An art historian, curator, writer, and educator, Burton has organized major thematic exhibitions such as “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and Weapon” (2017) at the New Museum, and “Take it or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology”(2014) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, along with major monographic exhibitions with artists including Jeffrey Gibson, Simone Leigh, Sherrie Levine, and Haim Steinbach. She served as series editor for the New Museum’s Critical Anthologies in Art and Culture (2015–2020), edited the October Files book devoted to Cindy Sherman (2006), and has penned catalogue essays for artists including Carol Bove, Wade Guyton, Rachel Harrison, Ellsworth Kelly, Cy Twombly, and Sable Elyse Smith, among many others.  

Burton’s past posts include tenures as Maurice Marciano Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles; Executive Director of the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Keith Haring Director & Curator of Education and Public Engagement at the New Museum, New York; Director of the Graduate Program at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), New York; and Associate Director & Senior Faculty Member at the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Program (ISP), New York. She was a 2019 Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) Fellow and currently serves on the board of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.