[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/yoon.jpg?w=960″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Whitney Museum in New York has named Soyoung Yoon as the next director of its Independent Study Program (ISP). She will start in her role on June 16.<\/p>\n
\n\tYoon will be only the third director in ISP\u2019s history and the first women and person of color to lead the program. Her hiring comes just over a year after the Whitney controversially paused the ISP. The program did not accept applicants for the 2025\u201326 cohort, but will welcome its next class in the fall 2027.<\/p>\n
\n\tYoon is currently the director of the Fine Arts MFA Program at the Parsons School of Design at the New School in New York. She is also an associate professor of art history and visual studies at the New School\u2019s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts. Previously, she directed Lang College\u2019s Visual Studies Program from 2013 to 2024. At Lang, she tripled its undergraduate program.<\/p>\n
\n\tYoon is also an alumna of ISP, having been the Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies fellow for the 2006\u201307 cohort, which also included Alex Kitnick, Brendan Fernandes, Ginger Brooks Takahashi, and Saya Woolfalk. She returned to ISP as a faculty member from 2012 to 2023, where she led seminars in critical theory.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI first encountered the\u00a0ISP\u00a0as an ideal for theory in practice, as a mode of study as well as politics and ethics, through my activism in the student movements in Seoul,\u201d Yoon said in a statement. \u201cThe\u00a0ISP\u00a0continues to be a community for those who are not quite at home in their institutions, disciplines, and practices, for those who question the methodologies, the discourses, the habitus, the social worlds of such practices, and thereby effect changes, become leaders, new legends, teachers for those to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe ISP is one of the country\u2019s most influential programs for post-secondary learning, though it does not grant degrees. Its alumni include artists like Tony Cokes, Andrea Fraser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Ren\u00e9e Green, Emily Jacir, Pope. L, and Constantina Zavitsanos, as well as curators and art historians like Huey Copeland, Jennifer Gonz\u00e1lez, Richard Armstrong, Naomi Beckwith, Johanna Burton, and Sheena Wagstaff.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe ISP has been paused since last June, when Whitney Museum director Scott Rothkopf announced the news in a letter addressed to the \u201cWhitney ISP Community,\u201d writing that the decision was made with \u201cmuch consideration with colleagues and with a deep sense of responsibility to the program\u2019s legacy and future.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tRothkopf cited the retirement of the ISP\u2019s founding director Ron Clark in 2023 as the main reason. Shortly after Clark\u2019s retirement, artist and ISP alumnus Gregg Bordowitz was hired as director by Adam Weinberg, the Whitney\u2019s previous director. But in February 2025, Rothkopf demoted Bordowitz to director-at-large, a role that ended that June. In a statement about the pausing of ISP, the Whitney said that \u201cthe ISP has faced challenges transitioning from Ron Clark\u2019s direction\u201d and that \u201cit would be a disservice to welcome a new cohort in September with the present gap in leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe decision to pause the ISP, however, came only two weeks after the Whitney canceled a performance that addressed the war and genocide in Gaza and was organized by its 2024\u201325 ISP cohort. Rothkopf\u2019s letter did not address the cancelation of the ISP event. Artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi charged the museum with censorship, saying they were told the performance, titled No Aesthetics Outside my Freedom: Mourning, Militancy and Performance<\/em>, was canceled because it contained \u201cexclusionary and inflammatory\u201d content in violation of the Whitney\u2019s policies.<\/p>\n \n\tA museum spokesperson told the Art Newspaper<\/em> at the time the decision to cancel was not taken \u201clightly\u201d but was \u201cclear and necessary,\u201d while adding that the museum will \u201ccontinue to support difficult and provocative discussion of important events and social issues.\u201d An open letter signed by hundreds of alumni and faculty of the ISP soon circulated in support of the three artists, adding that they \u201cuplift [the artists\u2019] efforts to create and debate art while reckoning with political violence and institutional coercion, and affirm our shared solidarity against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tYoon recently served on a 15-person advisory committee, made up of ISP alumni and faculty, meant to plot the future of the ISP, which was convened by Adrienne Edwards, Whitney senior curator and associate director of curatorial programs.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThis appointment is the culmination of a process undertaken with deep consideration over many months,\u201d Edwards said in a statement, adding that Yoon \u201cstood out as a compelling leader\u201d within the context of the advisory committee. \u201cShe brings intellectual rigor, a superb administrative acuity, and unwavering belief in the importance of theoretical and artistic inquiry and I cannot imagine a more thoughtful or committed steward to lead the Whitney\u2019s\u00a0ISP\u00a0forward.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/soyoung-yoon-director-whitney-museum-independent-study-program-1234789464\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/yoon.jpg?w=960″] The Whitney Museum in New York has named Soyoung Yoon as the next director of its Independent Study Program (ISP). She will start in her role on June 16. Yoon will be only the third director in ISP\u2019s history and the first women and person of color to lead the program. Her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1995518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1995518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1995518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1995518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1995518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1995518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}