External News and Events
Event: Writing Art History: Curating Contemporary Art
Friday, 19 June 2009
4.00 – 6.00pm, Research Forum South Room
The Courtauld Institute of Art
This informal seminar brings together three speakers with very different perspectives on curating.
Each speaker will present briefly on their own practice and then discussion will be invited with the audience on the curating of contemporary art. The focus of the session will be the impact of curation on the writing of art history, and how different models of curating are being employed in the presentation of contemporary art. This session is designed to complement the one-day symposium taking place on Saturday, 20 June 2009, on The Formats of Art History: the Art Book and the Exhibition.
Speakers:
Naomi Beckwith is Assistant Curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem whose particular concerns focus on identity and critical practices in contemporary art. Her master's thesis on Adrian Piper and Carrie Mae Weems earned Distinction from The Courtauld Institute of Art. Prior to joining the Studio Museum, Beckwith was project coordinator for BAMart at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a Helena Rubenstein Critical Studies Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and, most recently, the Whitney Lauder Curatorial Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Beckwith is a recent grant recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, a guest blogger for Art21 at PBS.org and Ubu Web. Beckwith sits on the board of The Laundromat Project and she has curated and co-curated several exhibitions at the ICA in Philadelphia and in New York at Cuchifritos, Artists Space and at the Studio Museum where she also manages the Artists in Residence programme.
Matthew Poole is Programme Director of the Centre for Curatorial Studies and Director of the MA in Gallery Studies & Critical Curating at The University of Essex. As well as lecturing, Matthew works as a freelance curator and collaborates with a wide variety of contemporary artists. He has experience working for a number of arts organisations and galleries both in the public and private sectors. His previous positions include: Curator for The Economist Building in St. James’s, London; Assistant Curator at Gasworks Gallery in Vauxhall; Assistant Curator of the UNILEVER art collection and freelance project manager for the Contemporary Art Society. Matthew is also a co-founder and currently a Director of PILOT, an international contemporary artists' & curators' forum and online archive [www.pilotlondon.org]. His recent research has focused on the relationship between the projected video image and architecture. The findings of this research have been presented both through writing and through a series of exhibitions, symposia and conferences, supported in part by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Lucy Steeds is an Associate Editor with Afterall, a research and publishing organisation based at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She is also a part-time PhD candidate in the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her previous employment includes six years in the exhibitions department at Arnolfini, a centre for the contemporary arts in Bristol. Lucy Steeds is the author of several catalogue essays (most recently on the work of John Wood and Paul Harrison) and she writes for the contemporary art press, most often Art Monthly.
This session is part of the Research Forum’s Writing Art History seminar group. For more information see http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/projects/ writingarthistory/index.shtml
Open to all, free admission
Organised by Catherine Grant and Lucy Bradnock
Event details
- Writing Art History: Curating Contemporary Art
- Location: London
- Date: Friday, 19th June 2009