LOS ANGELES — Klaus Biesenbach, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art here, has just made his first major curatorial hire. Mia Locks, best known as co-organizer of the 2017 Whitney Biennial, will join his team as a senior curator in July.

“Mia is a very engaged and research-driven curator who works closely with artists and is interested in how museums can reach out and address issues of social justice, environmental justice, the urgent questions of our time,” said Mr. Biesenbach, who has run the institution for six months after a long tenure at MoMA PS1. “For us this was very important.”

Ms. Locks had worked at MOCA once before, starting her career there as a curatorial assistant in 2010 before joining MoMA PS1 in 2013, where she was an assistant curator. In 2015, she was one of four curators to organize “Greater New York” for that museum. In 2017, as an independent curator working in New York, she teamed up with Christopher Y. Lew to organize the Whitney Biennial, which was acclaimed for its formal and racial diversity but also attacked for its inclusion of Dana Schutz’s painting of Emmett Till.

Mr. Biesenbach praised her handling of the controversy. “She’s a great mediator, a great communicator,” he said. “I thought she did a good job of keeping conversation going and supporting both sides.”