Nancy Adelson has been fortunate to pursue a legal career that allowed her to nurture her deep love of the arts. She joined the legal department of The Museum of Modern Art in 1998, became MoMA’s Deputy General Counsel in 2006, and retired from the Museum in 2020. Prior to her work as a museum lawyer, Nancy represented, advised, and delivered educational programs to emerging artists and not-for-profit arts organizations while employed by Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts as Senior Legal Counsel. Read more
Nancy Adelson, Josh T Franco, and Nyeema Morgan Join Joan Mitchell Foundation Board of Directors
The Joan Mitchell Foundation welcomes three new members to its Board of Directors for 2026: Nancy Adelson, an attorney based in New York; artist and art historian Josh T Franco; and Nyeema Morgan, an artist and professor based in Chicago.
Members of the Foundation’s board serve three-year terms, with a maximum of three consecutive terms. The Foundation strives to ensure that at least 30% of the board are practicing artists; many current and past board members are former grant recipients of the Foundation. The remaining members represent professional areas of expertise that complement and advise the Foundation’s mission-based work, including curators, conservators, arts programmers, non-profit executives, and financial professionals.
“We are thrilled to have Nancy, Josh, and Nyeema join the Foundation's board, as each of them bring varied and deep expertise in areas that are central to the Foundation’s work,” said Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. “As an attorney who spent a significant portion of her legal career at The Museum of Modern Art, Nancy Adelson brings expertise in stewarding an artist's intellectual property rights. Through his work as an artist and at the Archives of American Art, Josh T Franco’s background melds our commitment to artists and to legacy. Nyeema Morgan, a former Foundation grant recipient and Joan Mitchell Center Artist-in-Residence, is grounded in her work as an artist and art professor, and also in stewarding her artist mother's legacy. All three are deeply aligned with the Foundation's values and mission, while bringing fresh and different perspectives. Going into a year of strategic planning in 2026, we are grateful to have their voices at the table.”
About the New Board Members
I am excited and honored by this opportunity to serve on the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Board and am deeply grateful for the chance to be a part of its mission to preserve Joan Mitchell’s legacy and continue the Foundation’s essential commitment to support, recognize, and nurture visual artists.”
Nancy Adelson
Josh T Franco, PhD is an artist and art historian. He is Executive Director of the US Latinx Art Forum and Collector at Large at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art. As an artist, Franco’s primary medium is the discipline of art history itself. Using performance and a variety of materials, he transforms the components of being an art historian—reading, writing, annotating, sketching, lecturing, looking, museum going, archival research, and so on—into artworks appropriate for museum going audiences. Read more
After years of rich thinking together about how artists become ancestors, joining the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s board feels like a natural step. This is in addition to witnessing the Foundation's thoughtful and extensive support of living artists, including many of my peers. I could not be more thrilled to deepen my relationship with this incredible organization and the community in which it has invested so much.”
Josh T Franco
Nyeema Morgan is a visual artist and Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Morgan’s work is driven by a deep curiosity about how articulations of power are woven into our banal encounters with images, objects, and information. Morgan’s twenty-year art practice has been acknowledged through grants, fellowships, and residencies from the Art Matters Foundation, Artadia, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Harpo Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has exhibited her work widely in solo, two-person, and group exhibitions. Read more
It is an honor and inspiration to join the board of the Joan Mitchell Foundation at this moment of heightened political and cultural insecurity. Joan Mitchell’s uncompromising practice has been a strident reminder to me of the unapologetic stance we need to take in upholding artistic freedom. I look forward to the challenges and successes ahead of working with the Joan Mitchell Foundation in meeting the rising needs of artists across the country.”
Nyeema Morgan
