ICA names Nora Burnett Abrams as its new director

“This opportunity is just one that was so special,” Abrams said of her ICA appointment. “I couldn’t look in the other direction.”

Abrams will leave the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver after a six-year tenure during which time she increased the museum’s endowment by 30 percent, oversaw the opening of a second location, and led the creation of the organization’s Racial Equity Plan.

The New York City native, 46, was first hired at MCA Denver as an adjunct curator in 2009. Over the next decade, she worked her way up the museum’s curatorial ladder, organizing more than 40 exhibitions — including a collection of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s early work, a Tara Donovan retrospective, and a group show about the mythology of the American West — and authoring or contributing to more than 15 publications. (She also co-wrote a book about NFTs and the art world that published last year.)

Abrams credits her older sister, Liza, who was an art history major in college, as the person who inspired her to take an art history class in high school.

That decision “changed the course of my life,” said Abrams, who went on to earn her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, master’s from Columbia University, and doctorate from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. “It was as though I was coming into a language that I was fluent in.”

Sculptor and performance artist Senga Nengudi witnessed that fluency firsthand. Abrams curated a 2014 exhibition that surveyed a series of Nengudi’s sculptures dating back to the 1970s, titled “R.S.V.P.,” and was meant to mimic the elasticity of the human body. The ICA has one of the sculptures in its collection.

“[Nora] knew my work so well, I would let her take over when we had to do talks and lectures,” said Nengudi, who’s based in Colorado. “It made it very easy on me because I’m kind of shy.”

Steven Corkin, co-chair of ICA’s board of trustees, said Abrams’s strong people skills set her apart from the pool of more than 100 other candidates in consideration for the position.

Abrams is “somebody that really has the academic and art world chops, but also has a very high emotional intelligence,” said Corkin, who added that the “combination is more unusual to find than one might expect.”

The move to Boston will be an East Coast homecoming for Abrams, who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She still remembers what it was like to adjust to life in Denver when she relocated there 15 years ago from New York City and had to re-learn how to drive.

“There’s nothing more humbling than learning how to do something as a 32-year-old that 15-year-olds around you are becoming experts at on their own,” Abrams said with a laugh.

Along with her husband, Brian, Abrams will move with their two sons, ages 12 and 9.

At the time of the Globe’s interview, Abrams and her husband had yet to reveal her new job to their children. “They’re younger and we did not want to say to them, ‘Here’s this big news that’s going to affect all of us, and you have to keep it secret for a while,’” she said. “We’re timing our internal announcement a little bit to this public announcement. And I think they will be up for the adventure.”

In their free time, Abrams said, her family enjoys watching football, skiing, and riding bikes together. Abrams said she’s an avid runner and “a very bad gardener, but I love it.”

Corkin acknowledged that it will be “very difficult” for Abrams “to fill the exact shoes of a longtime leader” like Medvedow, who transformed the ICA from an institution housed in a rented police station that drew fewer than 20,000 visitors a year into a Seaport landmark that attracts some 300,000 people annually.

“But I think Nora is the person to do it,” Corkin said.

Abrams herself feels well-positioned to take over for Medvedow.

“It’s just about building on, amplifying, accelerating a lot of those incredible building blocks that are there,” Abrams said.

According to the ICA, Medvedow had no involvement in picking her successor. But she was previously acquainted with Abrams. Their relationship dates back to 2018, when Abrams participated in a fellowship at the Center for Curatorial Leadership that assigned the pair as mentee and mentor. As part of the fellowship, Abrams said, she spent “a really pivotal week in Boston” shadowing Medvedow at the ICA.

“She’s very open, she’s very honest, and she really welcomed me,” Abrams said of Medvedow, adding that the two have kept in touch informally over the years.

Corkin said the ICA board unanimously appointed Abrams and felt she was an ideal fit given MCA Denver’s similarities to the ICA.

Both museums center a number of exhibitions and programs around civic themes. And the construction of both museum buildings, completed in the 2000s, spurred development in the surrounding neighborhoods of their respective cities. Similar to the ICA Watershed in East Boston, MCA Denver also opened a second space for special programs.

ICA is described as “a museum at the intersection of contemporary art and civic life” on its website. That’s familiar ground for Abrams. Last year, she co-chaired Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s transition committee for arts and venues.

“I chose her precisely because of the dual skill set she brings,” both as someone well-connected to the art world and the local community, Johnston told the Globe. Abrams, he said, “has a way of thinking about, and focusing on, how we make art a part of everyday life in the city, not just for folks who might think of themselves as museum-goers.”

For contemporary art museums, “relevance is your currency,” Abrams said, so institutions need to be informed about, and respond to, what’s happening in local communities.

“The way that I experienced Nora and MCA Denver was not a silo. It was like a tree with roots and with branches that spread far beyond the solitary location of the building,” said Cambridge-based artist Tomashi Jackson, whose “Across the Universe” exhibition originated at MCA Denver.

Abrams’s first order of business in Boston will be planting roots of her own.

“It’s going to be a lot of listening,” she said, “connecting with people, and inviting them to share with me how they’re doing, what they’re doing, why they’re here, what’s lighting them up, what’s working.”

Julian E.J. Sorapuru can be reached at julian.sorapuru@globe.com. Follow him on X @JulianSorapuru.