Harvard Art Museum contemporary art curator Helen Molesworth plans on leaving HAM, her home since 2007, to take the position of chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art of Boston.

Helen Molesworth of the Harvard Art Museum will take over as chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, ICA officials announced earlier this month.

Molesworth, who has headed the modern and contemporary art department at Harvard since 2007, was chosen from a pool of 50 candidates to replace ICA’s Nicholas Baume, effective Feb. 22.

After it became clear that Harvard’s plans to build a new contemporary art museum in Allston would not move forward for several years, Molesworth decided to apply for the ICA position, she said in an interview with the Boston Globe on Jan. 13.

“I had been hired to help Harvard build a new museum across the river,” Molesworth told the Globe. But she said that one day she thought, “The ICA is that building. I should probably call.”

Molesworth could not be reached for comment yesterday.

“She will be missed, but our commitment to modern and contemporary art is unwavering and continues across several curatorial departments here at the Art Museum,” the museum’s director Thomas W. Lentz wrote in an e-mailed statement.

Lentz added that the Art Museum will begin a search for Molesworth’s replacement soon but did not specify a time frame.

As Harvard’s first curator of contemporary art since the museum established a department dedicated to contemporary art in 1997, Molesworth organized a number of noteworthy exhibitions, including this fall’s “ACT UP, New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993.”

“Helen is a curatorial force and will elevate the ICA to a new level of leadership,” Jill Medvedow, director of the ICA, said in a statement.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.