Carson Chan is the inaugural Director of the Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and Natural Environment, and a Curator in the Museum’s Department of Architecture and Design. He develops, leads, and implements the Ambasz Institute’s manifold research initiatives through a range of programs, including exhibitions, public lectures, conferences, seminars, and publications. Before joining MoMA in 2021, he worked as an architecture writer, curator, and educator. In 2006 he cofounded PROGRAM, a project space and residency program in Berlin that tested the disciplinary boundaries of architecture through exhibition making. Chan co-curated the 4th Marrakech Biennale in 2012, and the year after he served as Executive Curator of the Biennial of the Americas in Denver. He holds a bachelor of architecture degree from Cornell University and a master’s of design studies from Harvard Graduate School of Design. His doctoral research at Princeton University tracks the architecture of public aquariums in the postwar United States against the rise of environmentalism as a social and intellectual movement. He is a founding editor of Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment, an online publishing and research platform that foregrounds the environment in the study of architecture history.
Photo: Peter Rose