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Museum of Contemporary Art executive director Heidi Reitmaier.Maria Ponce

Less than a year after she arrived at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto executive director and CEO Heidi Reitmaier is leaving the job to move to the Art Gallery of Ontario.

MOCA said on Tuesday that Ms. Reitmaier is resigning effective Jan. 25, 2019, from a job she started in January, 2018. She is taking on the role of deputy director and chief of public programming and learning at the AGO.

Ms. Reitmaier, a peripatetic Toronto native who has worked in arts-leadership roles in the United States and Britain, came to MOCA from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where she was also director of public programming and education. She was working to shape MOCA’s mission after a recent move to a new home where the institution dropped a C from its initials and added international art to a collecting and exhibition mandate that had originally focused on Canadian work. MOCA Toronto reopened in the Tower Automotive Building in Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood last September and has welcomed 30,000 visitors since.

Although both the AGO and MOCA issued statements on Tuesday praising Ms. Reitmaier for completing a successful reopening, the executive arrived in Toronto earlier this year saying her job was to help shape the institution’s future and “to deepen the role the institution plays as a space of experimentation and innovation for artists and audiences.”

Ms. Reitmaier was not immediately available for further comment on Tuesday but said in a statement released by MOCA: “The successful opening of MOCA will always be a career highlight for me, and I know MOCA will continue to grow and flourish.”

The institution will now be run jointly by artistic director November Paynter and managing director Rachel Hilton.

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