Stephan Jost will step down from his role as the director and chief executive of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), the foremost art institution in Toronto, at the end of the current year. He has led the gallery since 2016 and has prioritised reaching younger and more diverse audiences during this tenure. A majority of gallery-goers are now under age 39 (without even factoring in school groups) and around 60% report having non-European heritage. Those numbers increasingly reflect the city at large, which is statistically one of the most diverse in the world.
“Over the summer, I reflected on arriving at the AGO ten years ago and establishing the strategic plan we call AGO 2028,” Jost said in a statement. “I realised that we have met our goals ahead of schedule. Now is the time to set the AGO up for the future with new leadership.”
The gallery’s permanent collection has increased dramatically during Jost’s decade of leadership, with more than 18,000 works being accessioned. That includes the high-profile donation of 450 pieces from late patrons Carol and Morton Rapp, 37 works from the estate of late telecoms executive Philip B. Lind, the 3,500-piece Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs, and significant bodies of work by individual artists including 450 pieces by Diane Arbus, 227 works by Hiroshi Sugimoto, 200 works by Peter Hujar and a collection of 170 works by Käthe Kollwitz.
Jost also helped launch a C$100m ($73.4m) building project that will see the AGO add 40,000 sq. ft of exhibition space, dubbed the Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, which is scheduled to open next year.
It has not been all been smooth sailing for Jost. A dispute over last year’s planned acquisition of a work by Nan Goldin, which was ultimately not acquired, led to the resignation of a curator and two acquisition committee members. The gallery was also closed for more than a month in the spring of 2024 after contract negotiations with a union representing more than 400 workers broke down, leading to a prolonged strike. And in 2023, the departure of the gallery’s highly respected Indigenous art curator Wanda Nanibush sparked public outcry and the resignation of another curator.
After an eventful decade in Toronto, Jost will take what’s he is calling “a bit of a break”, which may stretch for the better part of a year, before looking for a leadership role elsewhere. “Let me be blunt,” he says, “there’s no shortage of opportunities for major museum directors.”
Prior to his time in Toronto, the Michigan-born Jost held leadership roles at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Mills College Art Museum in California and the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, among others.
The AGO will be appointing an interim director when Jost parts on 31 December and embark on a global search for his successor.