Participants from MoMA International Curatorial Institute 2016

Over the past four years Diana Campbell Betancourt has developed the Dhaka Art Summit to be the world’s leading research and exhibitions platform for art from South Asia, and developed a new philanthropic platform to shift the discourse away from an Indo-centric one by bringing together artists, architects, curators, and writers from across South Asia and through a largely commission based model where new work and exhibitions are born in Bangladesh. She has curated numerous solo projects with artists such as Haroon Mirza, Simryn Gill, Tino Sehgal, Lynda Benglis, Shilpa Gupta, Shahzia Sikander, Naeem Mohaiemen, Runa Islam, Shumon Ahmed, Pawel Althamer, Asim Waqif, and Raqs Media Collective as well as group exhibitions such as Rewind (with Amara Antilla, Sabih Ahmed, and Beth Citron) and Mining Warm Data, and initiated a free, alternative education program called Samdani Seminars which bridges the gaps in curriculum between the various art schools in Dhaka with international guest faculty. She chairs the board of the Mumbai Art Room, has been a research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute and the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, and has collaborated with sculpture parks including Yorkshire Sculpture Park, de Cordova, and Wanas Konst on commissions of Indian sculpture. Formerly based in Mumbai for six years, beyond furthering and facilitating inter-regional South Asia dialog through her exhibitions and public programs, Betancourt has a keen interest in inter-Asia dialogs and was a resident researcher at the Fukuoka Asian Art in 2016 and co-curated the Mumbai City Pavilion for the 9th Shanghai Biennial in 2012 and her studies at Princeton included a concentration in Chinese Language and Culture. She has consulted the New Museum and MCA Chicago and many other leading institutions on their inclusion of South Asia in their exhibitions programs and has presented her research as part of MoMA’s C-MAP initiative.

Sebastian Cichocki is a curator, writer, and art critic. He is chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and curator of the Sculpture Park in the Warsaw district of Bródno. In the years 2005 to 2008 he was program director of the Contemporary Art Centre in Bytom. Select exhibitions curated by Sebastian Cichocki include the Polish pavilions at the 52nd and 54th Venice Biennales, with Monika Sosnowska (1:1) and Yael Bartana (... and Europe will Be Stunned) respectively, the latter project co-curated with Galit Eilat,Making Use. Life in Postartistic Times, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2016), Rainbow in the Dark. Part 2: On the Joy and Torment of Faith, Konstmuseum Malmö (2015), Rainbow in the Dark, SALT Galata, Istanbul (2014), Zofia Rydet, Record 1978-1990, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2015), Procedures for the Head, Kunsthalle Bratislava, Slovakia (2015), New National Art, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2012), Early Years, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2010), Raqs Media Collective, The Capital of Accumulation, Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (2010), Oskar Hansen. Process and Art 1966-2005, Museum of Modern Art in Skopje, Macedonia. Sebastian Cichocki has managed the Sculpture Park in Bródno, a long-term public art programme initiated in 2009 with the artist Paweł Althamer (featuring projects by Olafur Eliasson, Jens Haaning, Monika Sosnowska, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Ai Weiwei and others). He has produced a number of experimental exhibitions in the form of books, as well as residency programs and staged lectures.Cichocki is an author and co-author of several books on art e.g. A Cookbook for Political Imagination (2011), and The Future of Art Criticism as Pure Fiction (2011), Earth Works!(2014), and a popular children book on contemporary art “S.Z.T.U.K.A” (A.R.T.)

Michelle Elligott is Chief of Archives of The Museum of Modern Art. Ms. Elligott joined MoMA as a Mellon Fellow in 1995; she became Rona Roob Senior Museum Archivist in 1999. She reports to the Senior Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs. Ms. Elligott co-directed the Museum's widely acclaimed Exhibition History web archive project, co-edited the institution's first selfpublished history,Art in Our Time: A Chronicle of The Museum of Modern Art(2004); co-curated the MoMA exhibition 1969 at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1); and was part of the curatorial team for Abstract Expressionist New York: The Big Picture in 2010. She routinely organizes archival exhibitions. Past exhibitions include those devoted to James Lee Byars, Dada, and the history of dance and theater at MoMA. With her "Modern Artifacts" column, she is a regular contributor to the art magazine Esopus, and her book René d’Harnoncourt: The Art of Installationwill be forthcoming in 2017. She has published widely, including the articles "Modern Women: A Brief History" and "Dada: A Chronology," for MoMA; and "Schémas des origins et de l'évolution de l'art modern" for the Centre Pompidou. She has taught seminars on art archives in Havana, Caracas, and Buenos Aires, and has lectured extensively, including at the 2013 Venice Biennale, the Centre Pompidou, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, Contemporary Greek Art Institute, Athens, Greece, and the Frick Collection. In 2005, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in residence at the Benaki Museum in Athens, Greece. She has been Adjunct Assistant Professor of Museum Studies at New York University. Ms. Elligott holds degrees in art history from Smith College and Hunter College, City University of New York, with additional coursework at the Université de Paris IV, Sorbonne, and the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, Greece.

Gridthiya Gaweewong co-founded Project 304, a non-site / non profit art organization based in Bangkok. She received her MAAA (Arts Administration), from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL in 1996. Her curatorial projects have addressed issues of social transformation confronting artists from Thailand and beyond since the Cold War. Gridthiya has curated various regional and international exhibitions including Hidden Agenda (1996), Alien(gener)ation (2000 – 2003 in Bangkok, Khonkaen and Chiangmai), Under Construction, Tokyo Opera City Gallery and Japan Foundation, Forum Japan (2003), Bangkok Experimental film festival(1997- 2002), Temporary Insanity by Pinaree Sanpitak, Art Center, Jim Thompson Art Center,Bangkok Nothing, a retrospective by Rirkrit Tiravanija and Kamin Lertchaiprasert, Chiangmai University Art Museum - + - negative plus negative, Earl Lu Gallery, Singapore, Bangkok – Bangkok, an exchange art exhibition between Bangkok and La Capella, Barcelona and Die Markten, Brussels, as part of the KunstFestivalDesArts, Belgium. She co-curated with regional curators including with an exhibition, Politics of Fun, an exhibition of artists from Southeast Asia, with Ong Keng Sen at Haus Der Kulteren der Welt (House of the World Cultures), Berlin, and with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a reknow independent filmmaker, “Bangkok Democrazy”, the 4th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival, December 2005. Gridthiya co-curated with Rirkrit Tiravanija on Saigon Open City, Ho Chi Minh City in 2006 and with David Teh on Unreal Asia, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival (2010). Her recent project, commissioned by Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, is a travel exhibition of Apichatpong Weerasetheakul's The Serenity of Madness, MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum, Chiangmai (2016). Currently she lives and works as an artistic director of the Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok. 

After receiving her BA in Museum Studies with distinction, Hui He joined the Poly Art Museum in 2001. The Museum is the first and only institution in China that specializes in Chinese early bronze and Buddhist sculpture and was established by a state-owned enterprise, the Poly Group. She began her professional career at the Museum as an Assistant Curator, helping the team with exhibition planning, collection study, and publication editing until being promoted to Senior Curator in 2007. After completing her postgraduate studies in History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, she returned to Poly Art Group as Manager of Museum Development. She is now leading a consulting team that focuses on several newly built museums in major cities across China, including Shenyang, Tianjin, Changsha, and Shenzhen. As most of these museums are government funded, she is responsible for creating the exhibition plans and operations management in preparation of these museums’ opening in 2-3 years. Her interests and expertise span the iconography of patterns and motifs in early bronze to the study of the Buddhist belief system in Chinese society from the 15th to 18th centuries.

Himanshu Kadam has a post-graduate degree in Archaeology & Art History from the School of Art & Archaeology, University of Durham, the UK (2009) and an undergraduate degree in Heritage Management from the University of Mumbai, India (2007). Mr. Kadam has been awarded a number of scholarships and bursaries; the University of Durham in 2007, Diversity Fellowship from the Museums Association, the UK in 2009 (Norfolk Museums and Archaeology Services, Norwich, UK), Maharashtra Government Fellowship to study abroad, Bonita Trust & British Council funding for training at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), the UK in 2012 and International Visitor Programme, NRW Kultur International, Germany in 2014. Mr. Kadam has been working with the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum since 2010 under various capacities. At present, Mr. Kadam is Curator and manages the Museum’s exhibition programming such as conceptualising, assisting, executing and liaising with national and international Museums/Institutions. These shows are presented in the Special Exhibition Gallery located in the Museum building and involve interventions with the Museum's existing display of the permanent collection. Mr. Kadam is responsible for managing and maintenance of the Museum’s permanent collection and overall administration. He is currently researching early modern expressions by artists and the Museum’s collection of pottery from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai. This research will contribute to the ongoing research, documentation efforts and understanding of the Museum’s permanent collection. The Bombay School of Paintings offer valuable insight into the J.J. School’s formative period and the nascent origins of Indian modernism, complementing the Museum’s permanent collection of decorative objects and paintings also created by students of the J.J. School. Mr. Kadam has assisted in planning and implementing digital outreach programme at the Museum. Under this project, a new Museum website was launched in 2014. Additionally in 2015, he assisted Museum colleagues in launching the Museum collection on the Google Cultural Institute. At present, he is working on interactive digital projects for the Museum’s permanent collection. Since 2012, Mr. Kadam is the secretary to the Museum Trust and liaises with the trustees for Board and Executive Committee meetings. He assists the Hon. Director with fundraising initiatives, planning budgets and future projects. Mr. Kadam has helped the Hon. Director with the 'Museum Expansion Project' designed by Steven Holl. The new Museum wing aims to become the primary centre for the historical & contemporary cultural development of Mumbai.

Oliver Kase is Chief Curator of Modern Art at the Pinakothek der Moderne and oversees the Max Beckmann Archive. Since 2012 he has curated numerous exhibitions on modern art, including: Licht-Bilder. Fritz Winter und die abstrakte Fotografie (Light Pictures: Fritz Winter and Abstract Photography), 2012/13, on the work of the student of the Bauhaus; Farbenmensch Kirchner (Kirchner: Man of Colours), 2014, on the painterly technique of the Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner; and GegenKunst (Counter/Art), 2015, on the juxtaposition of “degenerate art” and Nazi art. From 2011 to 2012 Oliver Kase was assistant-curator for The Art of Enlightenment, a major international exhibit coproduced by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Munich, that went on show at the National Museum of China, Beijing. Oliver Kase earned his PhD in 2007 from the University of Heidelberg before serving as curatorial assistant at the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen and Bayerisches Nationalmuseum. He went on to become curator of the Fritz Winter Foundation and the Theo Wormland Foundation, which hold important works of Surrealist and magic-realist art. Oliver Kase is the author of numerous publications on the art of the 18th to 21st century and is a lecturer at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.

Sarah Meister became a Curator at The Museum of Modern Art in 2009, having joined the Department of Photography in 1997. She is the lead instructor for the online course Seeing Through Photographs on Coursera, and co-director of the August Sander Project (with Noam Elcott). Forthcoming books include One and One Is Four: The Bauhaus Photocollages of Josef Albers (November 2016) and Arbus Friedlander Winogrand: New Documents, 1967 (February 2017). Recent projects at MoMA have examined the work of Horacio Coppola (2015), the Thomas Walther Collection (2014-15), Nicholas Nixon (2014); Walker Evans (2013-14), Bill Brandt (2013) and Eugène Atget (2012). Meister contributes to and edits a variety of Museum and external publications including (in 2016) Photography at MoMA: 1920 to 1960, an essay for The Shape of Things: Photographs from Robert B. Menschel, a third collaboration with Maira Kalman and Daniel Handler, an article about Jan Groover for Osmos magazine and an interview with Nicholas Nixon for ZUM magazine. She is a member of MoMA’s C-MAP Latin America group, and a Digital Sponsor at the Museum.

James Muriuki works both as an independent artist and a curator, living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. He is a design graduate of University of Nairobi and a Managing Information Systems graduate of Strathmore University. He worked for eight years starting as a designer and later the gallery manager and curator at RaMoMA, before venturing off to private practice in 2011. His interest is that of the transitional state of developing nations, specifically interested in different knowledge systems (and that of art and visual imagery and photography) in those societies and how that can be incorporated into, recognized and adopted as part of the social fabric. He was involved in the production of the art magazine, Msanii, the artist book Layers, and contributed to the UNESCO publication, Documenting Living Heritage. Individually, he recently curated frontiers of the present: Exploring new ideas in photography, Nairobi, Passing it on: Inventorying Living Heritage in Africa, Windhoek among others. He has co-curated exhibitions, including In Memorium, Constructions, under the collective 3collect, which he was a founding member.

Jeannette Plaut is an architect from Universidad de Chile as well as a curator, architectural critic and academician. She funded and is the Director of CONSTRUCTO. She is the Director of YAP_CONSTRUCTO, Young Architects Program associated with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA / NY) since 2010. She works as a correspondent for Latin America for national and international media, magazines and books (1998-today). She is the author of several books including: PULSO: New Architecture in Chile, CEPAL, Rafael Iglesia, LATAM and PULSO2: New Architecture in Latin America, PULSO2: New Architecture in Latin America, Active Patrimony: Architecture as an Added Value, she is about to publish PULSO: New Art in Latin America. She has been professor of research studio at Universidad Católica de Chile and associated to the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at Universidad de Chile to develop a book and exhibition FAU: OBRA CONSTRUIDA (2017). She is the Chief Editor of Trace Magazine.

She was the curator of the architecture exhibition at the Chilean Pavilion at Expo Shanghai 2010 in China as well as the Director of the National Exhibition at the Chilean Architecture Biennial (2006), Director of the International Architects Encounter at the Chilean Architecture Biennial (2004), Coordinator of the National Exhibition at the Chilean Architecture Biennial (2002) and is part of the nominating panel of the Rolex Mentor & Protégés Arts Initiative (2014-2015), jury of the Ibero-American Architecture Biennial 2014 / BIAU (organized by the Spanish government) and nominator of the MCHAP and Emerge Americas Prize. She has lectured widely in Europe, South America and Asia. She has been a consultant for the Sustainable Development and Human Settlements Division of the United Nation’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) since 2004. She was the curator of the exhibition EXTRA-ORDINARY: New Practices in Chilean Architecture (Center for Architecture in New York, 2016) and is working on an exhibition+publication about modern kitchen (August 2017).

Emiliano Valdés is a curator, editor and cultural producer based in Medellín, Colombia where he is Chief Curator at the Museum of Modern Art (MAMM). Until recently, he was Associate Curator for the 10th Gwangju Biennale (South Korea) and Co-Director of Proyectos Ultravioleta (Guatemala). Previously, he was Curator/Director of Visual Arts at the Centro Cultural de España en Guatemala and Professor at the Francisco Marroquín University. In 2012, Valdés was the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Curatorial Fellow at dOCUMENTA(13) (Kassel), and has worked for institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, (Madrid), and contemporary Magazines, (London). He has been Co-Curator of the 8th Bienal de Artes Visuales Nicaragüenses (Nicaragua); Curator of the 17th Bienal de Arte Paiz (Guatemala); Director of the seminar ‘Hábitat: Arte contexto y análisis urbano’ (Managua) as well as Artistic Director of Foto30, a contemporary photography and image festival in Guatemala City. He has written for ArtNexus, Arte al Día, FlashArt, and The exhibitionist amongst other international publications as well as for numerous artist catalogs and books. He is currently working on a survey of Guatemalan contemporary art for the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara as part of Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA.