Founded in 1990, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present. The Center initiated its graduate program in 1994 and is one of the oldest institutions in curatorial pedagogy, offering a two-year graduate-degree program in curating. Hundreds of curators, writers, critics, artists, and scholars taught seminars and lectured in practicums. The Center alumni/ae include more than 200 individuals working in contemporary art field in the U.S. and internationally.
Jens Hoffmann Mesén is a writer, editor, educator, and exhibition maker. His work has attempted to expand the definition and context of exhibition making. From 2003 to 2007 Hoffmann was director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London. He is the former director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art from 2007 to 2016 and deputy director for exhibitions and programs at The Jewish Museum from 2012 to 2017, a role from which he was terminated following an investigation into sexual harassment allegations brought forth by staff members. Hoffmann has held several teaching positions including California College of the Arts, the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as others.
Vasif Kortun is a curator, writer and educator in the field of contemporary art, its institutions, and exhibition practices. Kortun served as the founding director of several international institutions, including SALT, Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Proje4L, and the Museum of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. In 2006, he received the Award for Curatorial Excellence from the Center for Curatorial Studies for his "experimental approach and openness to new ideas to challenge the contemporary art world and push its parameters beyond national or international, local or global developments." Kortun has written extensively on contemporary art and visual culture in Turkey for publications and periodicals internationally. He currently lives in Ayvalık, a seaside town on the northwestern Aegean coast of Turkey.
Charles Esche is a museum director, curator and writer. His focus is on art and how it reflects, provokes and influences changes in society. He lives between Edinburgh and Eindhoven.
Ahmet Öğüt is a conceptual artist living and working in Amsterdam, Netherlands and Berlin, Germany. He works with a broad range of media including video, photography, installation, drawing and printed media.
Răzvan Ion is known for creating the first artificial intelligence curator in the history of art. He is a theoretician, curator and futurist, speaker on new technologies & arts, and creator & manager of new art spaces.
Xurban collective was an international art collective founded in 2000. Core members of the group are Guven Incirlioglu and Hakan Topal, whose transatlantic collaborations took the form of media projects and installations. xurban_collective's projects instigate the questioning, examination, and discussion of contemporary politics, theory, and ideology, utilizing documentary photography, video, new media and text. The collective focuses specifically on areas of regional conflicts, military spatial confinement, urban segregation and neoliberal exclusion strategies. In September 2012 xurban_collective members concluded their collaboration to focus on their personal projects, artistic research and production.
Hakan Topal is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He was the co-founder with Guven Incirlioglu of xurban collective (2000–12), and is known for his research-based conceptual art practice. He is an Associate Professor of New Media and Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNY.
The contemporary art institution Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center opened in 2001 and was located on the pedestrian Istiklal Avenue in Istanbul, Turkey. Platform Garanti organized exhibitions; conferences and events; hosted an international residency program; and maintained a library and archive of contemporary art.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is an Italian-American writer, art historian and exhibition maker. She is the recipient of the 2019 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. Currently, she is the Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea and Fondazione Francesco Federico Cerruti in Turin. She was Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University (2013-2019).
Ahmet Güneştekin is a visual artist of Kurdish descent, whose works span painting, conceptual art and constructions sculpture. For Ahmet Güneştekin, a self-taught artist, art is a passion which has driven him since his childhood. He left the town of Batman for Istanbul in 1991, but had to wait several years before he found his own style at the beginning of the 2000s. He then abandoned the figurative to launch himself into a “narrative abstraction”. This kind of production is loaded with the recollection of a vernacular art, the memory of motifs such as carpets, lamps, Ottoman copperware in which geometry is the leading force.
The prize exhibition was held at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead from 21 October 2011 to 8 January 2012, the first to be held outside London since the 2007 Turner Prize exhibition was held at Tate Liverpool, and the first time the exhibition has ever been held at a non-Tate venue.
Nil Yalter is a Turkish contemporary feminist artist. She attended Robert College in Istanbul, Turkey and currently lives and works in Paris. Her work, which is included in many collections and museums, includes not only drawings and photographs, but also videos and performance art. In fact she is the first Turkish female video artist.
Ella Littwitz is an Israeli artist, living and working in Jaffa, Israel. Littwitz graduated with BFA from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in 2009.
Füsun Onur is a Turkish artist, based in Istanbul. She uses everyday materials in her painting and sculpture to reflect on space, time, rhythm and form.
Defne Ayas is a curator, educator, and publisher in the field of contemporary art and its institutions. Ayas directed and advised many institutions and collaborative platforms across the world, including in China, South Korea, United States, Netherlands, Russia, Lithuania and Italy. She is known for conceiving exhibition and biennale formats within diverse geographies, in each instance composing interdisciplinary frameworks that provide historical anchoring and engagement with local conditions. Until June 2021, Ayas was the Artistic Director of 2021 Gwangju Biennale, together with Natasha Ginwala.
Arter is a contemporary art museum in the Dolapdere district of Istanbul, Turkey.
The national pavilions host each participant nation's official representation during the Venice Biennale, an international art biennial exhibition held in Venice, Italy. Some countries own pavilion buildings in the Giardini della Biennale while others rent buildings throughout the city, but each country controls its own selection process and production costs.
Eleni Mylonas is a Greek-born American artist.
Adriano Pedrosa is a Brazilian curator. He is the artistic director of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) and the 2024 Venice Biennale. Among Pedrosa's most well-known curated shows is Histórias, a series of shows at MASP each examining in depth a different theme, often a community or identity. These shows have included Histórias da Sexualidade (2017), focused on histories of sexuality; Histórias Afro-Atlânticas (2018), focused on the African diaspora and legacy of the Transatlantic slave trade; and Histórias Brasileiras (2022), focused on histories of Brazil.
