Soyoung Yoon Appointed Director of the Whitney’s Independent Study Program
1June 17, 2026
TheWhitney Museum of American Art, New York, has announcedSoyoung Yoonas the new director of its prestigiousIndependent Study Program, effective immediately. Yoon, herself a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Fellow of the ISP’s 2006–2007 cohort, arrives to her new job from Parsons School of Design at the New School, where she was director of the fine arts MFA program. She is an associate professor of art history and visual studies at the New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, and from 2013 to 2024 served as director of the visual studies program there.
Founded in 1968 and absorbed into the Whitney in the 1980s, the ISP has a long history of nurturing top critical, curatorial, and artistic talent, counting among its alumni artists LaToya Ruby Frazier, Glenn Ligon, and Rirkrit Tiravanija; critics Huey Copeland and Roberta Smith; and curators Carlos Basualdo and Sheena Wagstaff.
Yoon’s appointment follows a yearlong pause of the program after a turbulent few years that saw the retirement of founding director Ron Clark; the hasty reassigning of Clark’s replacement, Gregg Bordowitz, to the post of director-at-large; and the firing of associate director Sara Nadal-Melsió over the cancellation of a Palestine-related performance curated by members of the 2024–25 class.
“I am very pleased to endorse the appointment of Soyoung Yoon to be the director of the Whitney Independent Study Program,” said Clark in a statement. “She has a strong and enduring commitment to the critical and theoretical practices that have historically defined the ISP. These practices have formed the foundation of the program’s intellectual content. Under Soyoung’s leadership, I have full confidence in the program’s future.”