Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the Edith Kreeger Wold Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York. The award honors individual achievements of curators who make lasting contributions that have shaped the way we conceive of exhibition-making today. The award comes with a $25,000 prize.
In addition to her role at Northwestern, Professor Christov-Barkargiev serves as director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti in Turin, Italy. Throughout her career, she has served in a variety of administrative and creative roles throughout the world including as senior curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, a MoMA affiliate in New York; chief curator at Castello di Rvioli; as artistic director of the 16th Biennale of Sydney; the artistic director of dOCUMENTA(13), which took place in Germany, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Canada; and curator of the 14th edition of the Istanbul Biennial.
As a writer, Professor Christov-Bakargiev is interested in the relations between historical avant-gardes and contemporary art. She is the author of several books including Arte Povera (Phiadon Press, 1999). She has lectured at several art and educational institutions and universities including Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India, the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California, the Cooper Union in New York, Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Di Tell University in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, the University of Frankfurt in Germany, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is a singular force within the field of contemporary exhibition making,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. “Her far-reaching ideas and bold commitment to artists making new and ambitious works is equally matched by her exploration of artistic histories and their re-presentations. Her remarkable dOCUMENTA(13) was undoubtedly one of the great exhibitions of our time.”