MoCA\CT’s Robin Jaffee Frank, Ph.D. – Photo Lewis Dérogène
WESTPORT—The Museum of Contemporary Art \ Connecticut (MoCA\CT) has hired Westport resident Robin Jaffee Frank, Ph.D., as Executive Director.
An independent curator, Dr. Frank has been active at MoCA as a member of the Visual Arts Advisory Committee and as a lecturer. In May 2025, she led a talk in May 2025 on the MoCA\CT exhibit “American Standard”, entitled “’O Say Can You See’: Artists Reimagine the Flag.”
Dr. Frank’s appointment is scheduled to be formally announced later today, Dec. 15, according to a notice from the museum. She will replace Pamela Hovland, who has been serving as acting executive director.
From 2011 to 2016, Dr. Frank served as Chief Curator and Curator of American Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut, and Senior Associate Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven.
Dr. Frank graduated Brandeis University with a double major – fine arts and English and American literature – and received a Doctor of Philosophy, History of Art degree from Yale University in 1994.
Her Wadsworth exhibition Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008 traveled nationally and was turned into an award-winning book.
She also authored “Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures,” and “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: American Art from the Yale University Art Gallery.”