Jill Medvedow is recognized across the United States as a national leader in the field of contemporary art and civic life. She dramatically altered the landscape for contemporary art in Boston when, in 2006, she opened the city’s first new art museum in nearly a century, the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA). During her 27-year tenure as director of the ICA, Medvedow began the museum’s permanent collection; developed a national model for teen arts education; and in 2018, opened the ICA Watershed, transforming a condemned former copper pipe factory in East Boston into a free and open space for immersive works of art.

Under her leadership, the ICA produced influential exhibitions and performances including Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957; Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present; Arlene Shechet: All at Once; Deana Lawson; Damian Ortega: Do it Yourself; Ragnar Kjartansson; Charles Atlas: About Time; John Akomfrah: Purple; and Firelei Báez, generating new scholarship and directions in the arts as well as supporting women artists and artists underrepresented in the art historical canon. In 2022, Medvedow served as the co-commissioner of the U.S. Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2022 presenting the work of Simone Leigh.

Medvedow is Director Emerita of the ICA, a strategic advisor to arts and educational institutions and leaders across the country, and is a regular literary commentator on The Culture Show on WGBH. Medvedow began her career championing artists’ books and working in artist-run spaces in New York and Seattle before founding Vita Brevis in Boston, producing groundbreaking temporary projects in public art; prior to the ICA, Medvedow held a leadership role at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Medvedow is a Trustee of the Rhode Island School of Design, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recently completed a fellowship in Art, Religion and Public Life at the Harvard Divinity School. Medvedow received her MA from Institute of Fine Arts, New York University and her BA from Colgate University; she is the subject of an MIT Sloan School of Management Case Study on Leadership.