The Whitney Museum in New York has appointed Soyoung Yoon as the next director of its Independent Study Program (ISP), making her only the third director in the program's history and the first woman and person of color to hold the role. Yoon, currently director of the Fine Arts MFA Program at Parsons School of Design and an associate professor at the New School, will begin on June 16. Her appointment comes after the Whitney controversially paused the ISP in 2024, skipping the 2025–26 cohort but planning to welcome a new class in fall 2027. Yoon is an ISP alumna, having been a Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies fellow in 2006–07, and later served as a faculty member from 2012 to 2023.
This appointment matters because the ISP is one of the most influential post-secondary art programs in the U.S., with alumni including major artists like Andrea Fraser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, as well as prominent curators. The program's pause last year followed the retirement of founding director Ron Clark and a controversy over the cancellation of a performance addressing the Gaza war organized by the ISP cohort, which artists and alumni condemned as censorship. Yoon's leadership is seen as a stabilizing move for a program that has faced challenges transitioning from its founding vision, and her hiring signals the Whitney's commitment to revitalizing the ISP while addressing its recent institutional tensions.