Madeleine Grynsztejn to leave the MCA Chicago at end of 2026

The Museum of Contemporary Art has put on blockbuster shows featuring the work of Nick Cave, David Bowie and, most recently, Yoko Ono — and seen its endowment triple in the past two decades.

But the downtown institution has also struggled with labor issues, ones that have afflicted countless other arts organizations in the post-COVID world.

Madeleine Grynsztejn, the woman who steered the MCA during those sometimes-turbulent times, says 2026 will be her last year as the institution’s Pritzker director.

“I have enormous gratitude for what my team and I, and especially our board, has accomplished in the last 18 years. We set out to make a great museum of contemporary art, and now it is recognized globally as well as locally,” Grynsztejn said in an interview Monday.

Grynsztejn, 64, said she plans to be “fully dedicated” to the MCA through the end of 2026, before stepping down.

“Madeleine is one of the defining leaders of her generation. Her exceptional tenure has elevated the MCA Chicago to new heights — nationally and internationally — while remaining deeply rooted in and responsive to our Chicago culture and community,” Board Chair Bill Silverstein said in a statement.

The MCA this week touted the high-profile artist retrospectives held at the museum during Grynsztejn’s tenure, including those dedicated to renowned painter Kerry James Marshall, whose work explores the African-American experience and Takashi Murakami, the Japanese artist, sculptor and filmmaker.

Grynsztejn also highlighted the museum’s bilingual initiative, which means visitors can now find Spanish descriptions in the galleries, as well as bilingual programming for families and kids.

Grynsztejn was also clearly delighted with the public reception for the Yoko Ono retrospective, which closed last month.

After opening at London’s Tate Modern and stopping in Germany, Chicago was the show’s only U.S. stop. The exhibit featured more than 200 items that showcased the breadth of Ono’s prolific artistic output and activism over seven decades.

“It was an extraordinarily warmly received and popular as well as accessible exhibition,” she said, noting that the show had the highest attendance of any show since 2019.

But the museum has also struggled with staffing issues. In 2024, staff there formed a union, citing, among other things, “burnout.”

A letter from MCA employees cited being overworked “through near-constant exhibition turnovers, hosting in-person programming on par with a pre-pandemic calendar, tight publication deadlines.” Because of staff shortages, employees said they work overtime and beyond their job descriptions. “In short, we are doing more (exhibitions, programs, publications) with less (staffing and funding),” they added.

The move to unionize followed the formation of a union at the Museum of Science and Industry in 2023, as well as at other high-profile Chicago cultural institutions.

“The MCA was not alone during a period in COVID when among other arts organizations we were closed for eight months, and for an organization whose number one job is to have its doors open every day for art to meet people, that was a period of unbelievable challenge …,” Grynsztejn said. “I am immensely proud of the way that our team came together in the face of these challenges, which were not uncommon across the board in museums in Chicago and beyond.”

Grynsztejn wouldn’t say specifically what she has in mind for the next phase of her life, but she said she intends to remain in the city that has been her home off and on for 30-plus years.

“I see working more directly with artists at scale in my future,” she said.