Joanne Cohen • Co-president • Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland
Creative Leadership
“We’re becoming more expansive, thinking about different voices and how
they can all contribute – it makes for a more robust and interesting experience.”
By Sharon Holbrook
52 SPRING 2022 | WWW.SHAKER.LIFE
Innovative thinking isn’t limited to the artist’s studio.
It also plays a role in the way we share art, support artists, and lead arts
organizations. Case in point: In a novel leadership arrangement initiated in 2021,
Shaker Heights resident and art professional Joanne Cohen began serving as one of
three new co-presidents of the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (moCa).
It’s not the first time that Cohen, who has been working as an art advisor for
over three decades, has been a trailblazer in the arts. In 2006, she became The
Cleveland Clinic’s first in-house art curator. Over her 14 years of leadership there,
she helped develop comprehensive arts programming and therapies and grow
the Clinic’s patient-friendly art collection to over 4,000 pieces.
Today, in addition to her work for moCa and as a private art consultant,
she serves on the board of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial for
Contemporary Art, a summer-long public art festival, and she also holds a
position with Museum Exchange, a start-up organization connecting art donors
with recipient organizations.
Clearly, one person can do a lot, at least if that person is Joanne Cohen.
Even so, after some institutional soul-searching, moCa determined that
no individual leader could bring as much perspective and expertise to the
organization as three people could together.
“We were at a pivotal point,” says Cohen of moCa over the last couple of
years. Its executive director was about to depart, and at the same time, moCa
was deepening its existing commitment to inclusivity. The organization was looking
to make art more accessible by broadening its public reach and building on a
variety of perspectives. When it came to leadership, the question was how to bring
that intention into action, and the idea of a co-presidency was born.
Photographs courtesy of
moCa Cleveland
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