LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Board of Directors at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and Good Works Executive Director Anne Ellegood announced the appointment of Amanda Sroka as the organization’s new Senior Curator. Sroka will relocate to Los Angeles from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) where she has been since 2014, most recently serving as the Associate Curator of Contemporary Art. She will begin her new position at ICA LA on September 6, 2022.

“We are thrilled to welcome Amanda Sroka to lead ICA LA’s curatorial program and to join our growing team as a senior staff member at an important moment when we have set ambitious goals for the museum and are poised for long-term growth,” says Anne Ellegood, ICA LA Good Works Executive Director, “Amanda’s discursive approach with abiding support for performance, video, and collaborations will meaningfully enhance ICA LA's commitment to showcasing interdisciplinary practices and our mission to critique the familiar and have empathy with the different. Her practice encompasses artists from around the world, yet she cares deeply for community and the local, and I have no doubt she will become an active and engaged participant in the vibrant visual arts communities of Los Angeles. Her great energy, intellect, and deep institutional knowledge will add enormously to ICA LA’s bright future.”

Sroka says, “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. 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. It is a privilege to do this work and an honor to do it alongside the team of visionary colleagues at the ICA LA.”




Sroka brings a wealth of experience to the role as a curator, researcher, writer, and programmer. Prior to joining the Philadelphia Museum of Art, she was Curatorial Assistant at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. During her tenure at the PMA, she contributed to framing the strategic vision for the museum’s collection and program, enhanced audience engagement, and accomplished significant institutional milestones, including realizing, together with Carlos Basualdo, the first artist room at the museum dedicated to a woman artist, which featured the work of Marisa Merz. In 2021, she organized the Philadelphia presentation of Senga Nengudi: Topologies, a monographic traveling exhibition devoted to this pioneering figure of the Black American avant-garde. This marked the most expansive presentation of Nengudi’s work to date and the first exhibition of its scale in the PMA’s history devoted to a Black woman artist. In 2018, Sroka worked with artists Yael Bartana and the Noa Eshkol dance company to realize a site-specific performance titled Bury Our Weapons, Not Our Bodies! Featuring dancers, war veterans, activists, and community volunteers, the performance took place across the entire city and was a poignant and poetic action that addressed systemic issues of violence and displacement.

Sroka’s notable exhibitions at PMA include Lawrence Abu Hamdan: Air Pressure (A diary of the sky) / The Future Fields Commission (forthcoming 2022); Zoe Leonard: Strange Fruit (2022); Martine Syms: Neural Swamp / The Future Fields Commission (2021); Senga Nengudi: Topologies (2021); Sean Scully: The Shape of Ideas (2021); Fault Lines: Contemporary Abstraction by Artists from South Asia (2020), featuring works by Tanya Goel, Sheela Gowda, Nasreen Mohamedi, Priya Ravish Mehra, Prabhavathi Meppayil, and Zarina; Pauline Boudry / Renata Lorenz: Silent (2020); and Yael Bartana: And Europe Will Be Stunned (2018). Significant permanent collection installations include Expanded Painting in the 1960s and 70s (2020), featuring works by Lynda Benglis, Sam Gilliam, and Jack Whitten, among others; and Word, Image & Domestic Dissent (2017), featuring works from the 1980s by artists Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Martha Rosler, Laurie Simmons, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems who employ word and image as tools to subversively deconstruct stereotypical perceptions of race, class, and gender.

At PMA, Sroka oversaw the Future Fields Commission, a joint initiative with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Italy to commission, acquire, and exhibit new work by some of the foremost artists from across the globe working in the mediums of video, performance, new media, and sound, including Rachel Rose, Martine Syms, and Lawrence Abu Hamdan. Together with artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and a team of over 150 collaborators, she also collectively organized Philadelphia Assembled, a complex multi-year endeavor that sought to map and celebrate the people and places that serve as agents of social transformation throughout Philadelphia and to re-imagine the museum as a more welcoming and inclusive space. Sroka’s proven commitment to reconsidering the role of museums in the urban landscape as a place of gathering that welcomes diverse communities perfectly aligns with ICA LA’s institutional values and its vision going forward.

As a specialist in the global histories of conceptual art and performance, Sroka’s curatorial vision is international in scope and interdisciplinary in nature. Prior to her time at PMA, she also served as an Independent Researcher for the 2015 exhibition, The Great Mother at the Fondazione Nicole Trussardi in Milan, Italy, and as a Gallery Assistant at Pilar Corrias in London, England. In her capacity as a contemporary art scholar, Sroka has presented at conferences and convenings; written for numerous publications; and has acted as a visiting lecturer and critic at the School of Visual Arts in New York; the University of Pennsylvania; Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University; Moore College of Art; Bryn Mawr College; and Penn State University.

“ICA LA has been at the forefront of imagining what a progressive and forward-thinking institution means, and has embarked on a number of curatorial, educational, environmental, and civic activities to enact this vision,” notes Laura Donnelley, ICA LA Board President. “On behalf of ICA LA’s Board of Directors, we are so proud to welcome Amanda Sroka to Los Angeles and look forward to working closely with her as the museum approaches its 40th anniversary in 2028.”

Sroka joins ICA LA prior to the opening of its fall exhibitions with Los Angeles-based painter Rebecca Morris and performance collective My Barbarian. The Rebecca Morris exhibition will be the final one curated by ICA LA’s former Senior Curator Jamillah James who joined MCA Chicago as the Manilow Senior Curator earlier this year. Sroka will curate her first exhibition at ICA LA in 2023.