Yukiko Yamagata Takes Charge of Print Center New York

By Marcus Bennett

Print Center New York announced Yukiko Yamagata as its third executive director in the nonprofit exhibition space’s 31-year history. She succeeds Judy Hecker, whose 10-year tenure ended in February, after a national search by the board’s search committee.

Board chair David Sabel said in a statement: “Yukiko stood out for how she balances a talent for capacity-building with strong programmatic instinct and experience working in a global context.”

On a video call, Yamagata said: “Leading Print Center is truly a dream role. I’m really driven by a strong belief that a society in which creativity and free expression thrive is the cornerstone of democracy.”

A career built around connection

Yamagata’s move follows 22 months at Creative Time, the New York-based public arts organization, where she served first as deputy director and then as interim executive director.

Her career started in the late 1990s at the Whitney Museum of American Art as a senior curatorial assistant in its photography department. There, an exhibition on American documentary photographer Susan Meisela provided the central idea that would shape her subsequent work.

Yamagata said Meisela “views photography not as an isolated object, but as a starting point that expands a circle of knowledge and connection and engagement.” She added: “That concept has really shaped my career in the arts, throughout photography, socially engaged art, and public art.”

• Yamagata spent two years at New York Public Library’s Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture.
• She then spent 16 years at Open Society Foundations, serving as curatorial and deputy director for culture and art.
• In that role, she oversaw a $15.8 million program providing fellowships and grants to socially engaged creatives worldwide.

Print as a democratic medium

Yamagata linked that grantmaking career to Print Center’s medium. “I really feel like print is a natural extension of that trajectory,” she said, due to “its collaborative nature, broad dissemination, and democratic underpinnings.”

She said she was particularly excited about Print Center’s interdisciplinary approach. The center’s next exhibition will highlight the interplay between Chicanx printmaking and fashion.

The exhibition places Yamagata’s appointment within a renewed institutional interest in printmaking. The medium’s collaborative possibilities now sit alongside the center’s 31-year organizational history and its 25-year record of public exhibitions.

Why print now?

Yamagata described a pivotal moment for both Print Center and printmaking, saying the medium was attracting unprecedented interest. She noted that newly installed directors at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum of Art and Hood Museum of Art all “cut their teeth in prints.”

Print Center has just marked 25 years since opening its first physical location. Next year, it will celebrate five years on 24th Street.

What does the appointment change for Print Center?

Yamagata said: “Looking ahead, I’m really thinking about continuing ways to expand our audience” through educational opportunities, global partnerships, and more.

For the nonprofit exhibition space, the practical change is a stated emphasis on audience growth under its third director. Educational work and global partnerships sit alongside the center’s 25-year physical history and a medium attracting new institutional interest.

Print Center enters its next chapter with a director whose experience spans curatorial work, grantmaking and public art. The next exhibition and the partnerships that follow will show how far Yamagata can extend the center’s reach through education and global collaboration.