Participants from MoMA International Curatorial Institute 2015

Paulina Bravo

Paulina Bravo

Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs

As an art historian and curator, Paulina Bravo’s area of specialization has been modern and contemporary art. Between 2007 and 2009, she collaborated at Fundación/Colección Jumex in the organization of exhibitions such as Schweiz über alles, (January-March 2008), Brave New Worlds, organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis (April-July 2008),An Unruly History of the Readymade (September 2008-March 2009), curated by Jessica Morgan, and The Practice of the Everyday Life in collaboration with the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico (November 2008-March 2009). Adding 10 years of experience in the field of museums, she has organized more than 20 exhibitions. Recently, she served as Deputy Director for the Art Platform of the second edition of the Biennial of the Americas, 2013, in the city of Denver, being responsible for the executive and curatorial direction of the exhibits: Draft Urbanism, curated by Carson Chan, Paul Andersen and Gaspar Libedinsky, that consisted in four large-scale architecture installations around the Downtown of the city; 30 artworks commissioned to be displayed on billboards; and an exhibit entitled First Draft curated by Cortney Stell that showcased 23 local artists. Since 2014 she has been working at the Museo Nacional de Arte Mexico as Chief Curator by serving as Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs. She is responsible for directing the curatorial team of the museum on the renovation of the 32 gallery rooms of the permanent collection, schedule to be finalized in 2018. In parallel, she is in charge of programming and curating temporary and traveling exhibitions, constantly building international collaborations with institutions such as the Fines Arts Museum of Lyon in France, the RMN-Grand Palais in Paris, MALBA in Argentina, the Tate, the Whitney Museum of Art, among others. Throughout her career she has written critical essays for exhibition catalogues and specialized publications in Mexico and abroad. 

Wang Chunchen

Wang Chunchen

Head of the Department of Curatorial Research

Dr. Wang Chunchen is the Head of the Department of Curatorial Research of CAFA Art Museum at the Central Academy of Fine Arts China, as well as an Adjunct Curator of The Broad Art Museum of Michigan State University, in 2013 he is appointed as Curator of Pavilion of China at the 55th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, and also Deputy Principal Editor of Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art in UK. Also editor-in-chief of The Chinese Contemporary Art Seriespublished by Springer -Verlag, Germany. He traveled much to Minneapolis, Seoul, New York, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, East Lansing, Paris, Berlin for the symposiums, forums, and lectures. In 2015 he was invited by Tate as the visiting research fellow. He is known for his contributions to the arts via his own body of works, publications and curatorial experiences. In 2009 he was honored with the coveted Chinese Contemporary Art Award which is echo by the numerous awards he has received for his input in Art Criticism. The result of this award is the writing and publication of Art Intervenes in Society. With some of the most notable shows being Future Returns: Contemporary Art from China, 2014, Broad Art Museum, USA; Transfiguration: The Presence of Chinese Artistic Methods in Venice, 2013, Italy; Conceptual Renewal: A Brief History of Chinese Contemporary Photography, 2012, Beijing; The First Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennale, 2012, Shenzhen; Sub-Phenomena: A Report of the State of Young Chinese Artists, Beijing, 2012;CAFAM Biennale 2011: Super-Organism, 2011, Beijing; Mixed Maze, 2008, London; Supernatural – China’s Photography in the New Century, 2008, New York. Wang Chunchen has also played a great influence on Chinese contemporary art criticism by his translations of over ten books of art history and theory: such as After the End of Art (Arthur C. Danto), The Abuse of Beauty, Art Since 1940, Theory in Contemporary Art Since 1985, etc. In 2013 his two volumes of essays are published: The Democracy of Art and The Politics of Images.

Roobina Karode

Roobina Karode

Director and Chief Curator

Roobina Karode has post-graduate specializations in Art History and in Education. She is an art educator, writer and curator, and has over the years been involved with the teaching of Art History, both Indian and Western at various institutions mainly the School of Arts & Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, The National Museum Institute, College of Art and the Jamia Millia Islamia University in New Delhi. Roobina was also the co-curator from India in 1997, representing the Indian section at the First Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in Japan where select Indian artists were shown in the context of an emerging Asianism. Awarded the Fulbright Fellowship in 2000, she was placed as a Visiting scholar at the Women’s Leadership Institute, Mills College in California, where she curated ‘Resonance’ a show of 20th century California painters and sculptors from the Mills College Art Collection. Roobina has written extensive monographic catalogues on contemporary Indian artists across generations and for cross cultural collaborations representing Contemporary Indian art in Hungary, Norway and Japan. She has curated several art exhibition both within India and abroad. In 2007-8, she co-curated a travelling exhibit on seventeen women artists of India at the Women’s Studies Research Center, Brandeis University, USA, titled Tiger by the Tail, Women Artists of India Transforming Culture. In 2011, she was invited by IGNCA to curate a retrospective exhibition on the veteran Indian artist Krishna Reddy, who has been living in New York for more than fifty years.

For the last five years, Roobina has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi, the first private art museum on modern and contemporary art in India. Her broad vision for the Museum is premised on the belief that museums are not merely repositories of objects or sites of display, but places of interaction and confluence. It is crucial to bridge the disconnect between art and the larger public through diverse educational and public programming that will hopefully reach out to various groups of audiences.

At KNMA, her long list of curated exhibitions include Is it what you think? Ruminations on Time, Memory and Site ( 2014), a major retrospective on Nalini Malani titled You can’t keep acid in a paper bag(2014), DIFFICULT LOVES, a three-part exhibition that included a retrospective on Nasreen Mohamedi titled ‘a view to infinity’(2013), an exhibition on Amrita Sher-Gil titled ‘the self in making’ and a constellation of younger women contemporaries titled SEVEN CONTEMPORARIES. 

Rita Kersting

Rita Kersting

Landau Family Curator of Contemporary Art

Rita Kersting served as the Landeau Family Curator for Contemporary Art the Israel Museum in Jerusalem from 2012 to 2016. Since 2014 she has been a member of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’s Supervisory Board. She curated the exhibition abc – about painting at the Gleisdreieck / Station, Berlin showcasing 130 artists in 2011. From 2001-07 she was director of the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Before that she worked in the curatorial department at the Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany and at the Museum Ludwig Cologne. Her Master’s at the University of Cologne focused on Joan Jonas.

Inhye Kim

Inhye Kim

Curator

Inhye Kim graduated from the Department of Art History at the Seoul National University, with a PhD thesis on “Lu Xun’s (1881-1936) Modern Woodcut Movement: Between Art and Politics.” Since 2002 she has been working for the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Korea, curating and co-curating various exhibitions including Cubism in Asia: Unbounded Dialogues(2004-2005), Realism in Asian Art (2009), Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Art 1976-2010 (2010-2011), Deoksugung Project (2012)Madala: A Retrospective of PARK HYUNKI (2015) etc. Currently she also works on the launch and management of the Research and Archive Centre at the museum. Opened in 2013, this Centre is collecting and cataloguing Korean modern and contemporary artists’ archives and is also supporting research on Korean art. Her academic interest lies in Korean modern art history, specifically focusing on its comparative study in the Asian context.

Kateirna Koskina

Kateirna Koskina

Director

Art Historian-Museologist and Curator of exhibitions. Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, since December 2014. Born in Corfu, she studied French Literature at the University of Athens, as well as History and Philosophy of Art at Paris I-Sorbonne University. In addition, she studied Museology at the Ecole du Louvre. She has a PhD in Art History. She worked from 1988 to 1992 at the European Cultural Centre of Delphi as a Special Advisor for visual arts. She was the Greek Commissioner at the 23rd Biennale of Sao Paulo in 1996 and at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005, and the Director of the 3rd, 4th and the 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (2011-2015). From 1992 to October 2014 she was Curator of the Alpha Bank Art Collection. She was also Artistic Director of the J. F. Costopoulos Foundation, Athens, until the end of 2014 (1992-2014). She was President of the Board of Trustees of the State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, from December 2008 until January 2015, member of the Artistic Committee of the Athens METRO from 1998 to 2011, and Artistic Consultant to the Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games / Athens 2004 S.A. from 2000 to 2004. She is a member of ICOM, and of AICA Hellas. She has organized, directed, curated and/or co-curated group and solo shows and contributed essays to several books and exhibition catalogues, as well as articles in newspapers and art magazines. She was named Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia and Chevalier dans l’ Ordre national de la Legion d’ Honneur. 

Koyo Kouoh

Koyo Kouoh

Artistic Director

Koyo Kouoh is the founding artistic director of RAW Material Company, a center for art, knowledge and society in Dakar and the curator of FORUM, the education programme at 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London and New York. Kouoh trained in Banking Administration and Cultural Management in Switzerland and France. She served in the curatorial teams for documenta 12 (2007) and documenta 13 (2012). Her recent projects include: Body Talk: Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the work of six African women artists, WIELS, Lunds Konsthall, 49N6E FRAC Lorraine (2015– 2016); Precarious Imaging: Visibility surrounding African Queerness, RAW Material Company (2014); Word!Word?Word! Issa Samb and the undecipherable form, RAW Material Company/OCA/Sternberg Press (2013), the first monograph dedicated to the work of seminal Senegalese artist Issa Samb; Condition Report on Building Art Institutions in Africa, a collection of essays resulting from the eponymous symposium held in Dakar in January 2012; Chronicle of a Revolt: Photographs of a Season of Protest, RAW Material Company & Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2012). Besides a sustained theoretical, exhibition, and residency program at RAW Material Company, she maintains a critical curatorial, advisory and judging activity internationally. In collaboration with Rasha Salti, Kouoh is working on Saving Bruce Lee: African and Arab Cinema in the Era of Soviet Cultural Diplomacy, a three-year research, exhibition and publication project to be held at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow in June 2015 and September 2016. She lives and works in Dakar and Basel.

Snejana Krasteva

Snejana Krasteva

Curator

Snejana Krasteva is a curator at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. Born in Bulgaria, she graduated from Nanjing University in China and from 2004-07 run the gallery Beijing Tokyo Art Projects before joining the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (2007-2009). After graduating from Goldsmiths College, London in 2011 she has worked as a curator for Art on the Underground in London where she realised a series of projects and commissions in the public realm. At Garage, she has co-organised the first conference on this topic in RussiaPerformance Art: Ethics in Action (2013); curated the exhibition The Other Side (2014), exploring the alternative scene in Moscow; co-curated the first major exhibition of Eastern European art in Russia Grammar of Freedom / 5 Lessons: Works from the Arteast 2000+ Collection(2015) as well as artist’s Katharina Grosse first solo exhibition in Moscow yes no why later(2015). She is currently one the curators leading on the Garage Field Research program – a cross-disciplinary research body whose aim is to produce new material on a wide range of overlooked or underrepresented social and cultural phenomena in Russia. 

Daniel Muzyczuk

Daniel Muzyczuk

Curator

Daniel Muzyczuk is a writer and curator. He is the chief curator at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and was part of the curatorial team (2008- 2011) at the CoCA in Toruń. He curated numerous projects, among others: Long Gone Susan Philipsz, CoCA, Toruń, 2009; Gone to Croatan (with Robert Rumas); CoCA, Toruń; HMKV, Dortmund, 2008-2011; Mariusz Waras and Krzysztof Topolski, Factory, CoCA, Toruń, 2009; Views 2011, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, 2011; and Sounding the Body Electric (with David Crowley), Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź; Calvert 22, London, 2012-2013. He is the winner (together with Agnieszka Pindera) of the Igor Zabel Competition in 2011. Co-curator of the exhibition of Konrad Smoleński for Polish Pavillion for the 55th Venice Biennale (with Agnieszka Pindera). Since 2015 he is the vice-president of AICA Poland.

Azu Nwagbogu

Azu Nwagbogu

Director

Azu Nwagbogu is the founder and director of the African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria that is dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African arts and artists. Established in 2007, the AAF organises art exhibitions, competitions, and workshops with the aim of unearthing and developing talent in Nigeria. Nwagbogu founded the National Art Competition in 2008, an annual arts competition in Nigeria that provides a platform of exposure to emerging Nigerian artists. Nwagbogu also serves as founder and director of the LagosPhoto Festival, an annual international arts festival of photography that brings leading local and international photographers in dialogue with multifaceted stories of Africa. Nwagbogu has served as a juror for the Dutch Doc World Press Photo, POPCAP Photography Awards, Photo Book Award and has curated several local and international exhibitions including the Arles discovery award. Nwagbogu lives and works in Lagos. 

Jack Persekian

Jack Persekian

Director

Born in Jerusalem in 1962, Jack Persekian has a career in art and music spanning more than 30 years. He started his professional life as a musician and band manager in the 1980s, before shifting paths slightly in the early '90s to open Palestine’s first and only art gallery, Anadiel. Following the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in the mid 1990s, Persekian was put in charge of setting up the Ministry of Culture’s Visual Arts department; alongside a group of artists and supporters he then went on to establish the Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art in Jerusalem, of which he remains the Founding Director. In the year 1999, he directed and produced the millennium celebrations in Bethlehem, before leaving Palestine in the mid 2000s to serve as Head Curator of the Sharjah Biennial. Persekian continued in this role for two editions of the biennial, after which, in 2007, he was appointed its Artistic Director; he then became the Founding Director of the Sharjah Art Foundation in 2009. Upon his return to Jerusalem in 2011 Persekian helped establish a biennial in Palestine, Qalandiya International, acting as artistic director for its first edition in 2012. He was appointed Director and Head Curator of the Palestinian Museum that same year, and holds that position, in addition to his involvement with several other projects, to this day

Yasmil Raymond

Yasmil Raymond

Associate Curator Painting and Sculpture

Yasmil Raymond is Associate Curator in the Painting and Sculpture Department at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Prior to MoMA, Ms. Raymond was the curator of Dia Art Foundation where she has organized exhibitions and projects with artists Allora & Calzadilla (2015), Carl Andre (2014), Thomas Hirschhorn (2013-12), Jean-Luc Moulène (2012), Yvonne Rainer (2011-12), Ian Wilson (2011-13), Robert Whitman (2011), Koo Jeong A (2010-11), Franz Erhard Walther (2010-12), and Trisha Brown (2009-10). Before Dia Art Foundation, she served as associate curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis for five years. At the Walker, Raymond co-curated several seminal exhibitions, most recently, with Philippe Vergne, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love, which won the 2008 award for the “Best Monographic Museum Show Nationally” from the International Association of Art Critics. Raymond curated solo exhibitions with Tomas Saraceno and Tino Sehgal, and cocurated with Doryun Chong the group exhibition Brave New Worlds. Ms. Raymond was part of the education department at MCA Chicago before Walker. She received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from Bard College, Center for Curatorial Studies.

Sarah Suzuki

Sarah Suzuki

Associate Curator, Drawings and Prints

Sarah Suzuki is Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints at the Museum of Modern Art. At MoMA, Ms. Suzuki’s exhibitions include Jean Dubuffet: Soul of the Underground (2014-15); The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters (2014-15); Wait, Later This Will All Be Nothing: Editions by Dieter Roth (2013); Printin’ (2011) with the artist Ellen Gallagher; ‘Ideas Not Theories’: Artists and The Club, 1942- 1962 (2010) and Rock Paper Scissors (2010) with Jodi Hauptman; Mind & Matter: Alternative Abstractions, 1940 to Now (2010); and Wunderkammer: A Century of Curiosities (2008), as well as solo exhibitions of Meiro Koizumi (2013); Yin Xiuzhen (2010); Song Dong (2009); and Gert and Uwe Tobias (2008). Among her publications are 2012’s What is a Print?, as well as contributions to numerous books, catalogues, and journals. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Columbia University, she has lectured widely and taught numerous courses on the subject of modern and contemporary art.