Amanda Sroka has been announced as the new senior curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICA Los Angeles). Sroka will replace Jamillah James in the role, who earlier this year left for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.
After completing her Art History MA at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and having assisted at Pilar Corrias Gallery in London alongside her studies, Sroka was a curatorial assistant at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art before joining the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2014, where she served as their associate curator of contemporary art.
Eight years later, she departs for ICA Los Angeles at a turning point for the institution as it concludes its six-year strategic plan to reshape itself around key areas: exhibitions, learning and engagement, facility, communications and visitor experience, and finance and fundraising. ‘We did a deep dive into the institution and our vision for the future and what goals we need to set to accomplish that vision,’ director Anne Ellegood says, ‘and now we have an incredible roadmap… Amanda has been working at a large institution and she has that institutional knowledge and I felt that was really critical.’
‘I am deeply inspired by, and committed to, the power of art to interrogate the complexities of our time and to illuminate our interconnectedness as a people and a world,’ Sroka said in yesterday’s announcement. The ICA LA ‘is a space that facilitates connection, fosters radical welcome, and amplifies the voices of the marginalized and the emergent. I am thrilled by this opportunity to further the institution’s legacy, to grow its program and publics, and to contribute to embodying and magnifying its mission — a mission centered in care, critique, and community.’
Sroka has acquired something of a record for highlighting interdisciplinary and collaborative work by women and BIPOC artists during her tenure at the PMA. She co-organized the museum’s first artist room dedicated to a woman artist, Marisa Merz, and organized the traveling exhibition Senga Nengudi: Topologies (2021) – it was the first show of its ilk at the ICA Los Angeles devoted to a Black woman artist.
‘One of the reasons I was so drawn to her is that she has this scope that’s international, in terms of her curatorial interests and expertise, but she roots herself very much in the local at the same time’, Ellegood continued in her praise.
Sroka will take up her position on 6 September.
