Stuart Comer is an American art curator and writer who is currently Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was co-curator of the 2014 Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, alongside Michelle Grabner and Anthony Elms.
Comer received a BA degree in art history from Carleton College in Minnesota and an MA in curatorial studies from the Royal College of Art, London. [1] He began his career as a book buyer at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. [2]
Before taking his position at The Museum of Modern Art, he served as the first Curator of Film at Tate Modern in London. His projects at Tate Modern included the work of Tony Conrad, Nan Goldin, Barbara Hammer, Derek Jarman, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Daria Martin & Zeena Parkins, Shuji Terayama, Throbbing Gristle and Jennifer West. In 2012, when Tate Modern opened a new exhibition space housed in disused former oil tanks, Comer acted as co-curator of the opening festival of live and time-based media that included the work of Boris Charmatz, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Ei Arakawa, Tania Bruguera and Aldo Tambellini, among others. [3] While at Tate Modern, he was responsible for overseeing the acquisition of work for the museum's film and video collection, adding key works by Ant Farm, Cory Arcangel, Charles Atlas, Peter Campus, Oskar Fischinger, Jack Goldstein, Mike Kelley, KwieKulik, Jonas Mekas, Paul McCarthy, Lis Rhodes, Allan Sekula, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Akram Zaatari. From 2002 until 2004, Comer was also Curator of Public Programmes at Tate Modern. He was co-curator of the Lyon Biennial in 2007.
Comer has contributed writing to publications such as Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, Mousse, Parkett and Art Review, and has written on the work of artists Andrea Fraser, John Smith, David Lamelas, Tom Burr, Akram Zaatari, Sharon Lockhart, Bik Van Der Pol, Mark Morrisroe, and Gillian Wearing. He is the editor of Film and Video Art (2009), published by Tate.
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
Carey Young is a visual artist whose work is often inspired by law, politics and economics. The tools, language and architectures of these fields act as material for her videos, text works, performances and photographs, often developing from the professional cultures she explores. In her early video works, she donned attire appropriate to the business and legal worlds, enacting scenarios which examine and question each institution's power to shape society and individual identity. Since 2002, Young developed a large body of work addressing and critiquing law in relation to ideas of site, gender and performance. Young teaches at the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she is an Associate Professor in Fine Art.
RoseLee Goldberg is an American-based art historian, author, critic and curator of performance art. She is most well known as being the founder and director of Performa, a performance art organisation. She is also currently a Clinical Associate Professor of Arts Administration at New York University.
Michael Smith is an American artist known for his performance, video and installation works. He emerged in the mid-1970s at a time when performance and narrative-based art was beginning to claim space in contemporary art. Included among the Pictures Generation artists, he also appropriated pop culture, using television conventions rather than tropes from static media. Since 1979, much of Smith's work has centered on an Everyman character, "Mike," that he has portrayed in various domestic, entrepreneurial and artistic endeavors. Writers have described his videos and immersive installations as "poker-faced parodies" that sit on the edge between art and entertainment, examining ideas, cultural shifts and absurdities involving the American dream, consumerism, the art world, and aging. Village Voice critic Jerry Saltz called Smith "a consummate explorer of the land of the loser … limning a fine line between reality and satire [in] a genre sometimes called installation verité."
Walid Raad (Ra'ad) (Arabic: وليد رعد) (born 1967 in Chbanieh, Lebanon) is a contemporary media artist. The Atlas Group is a fictional collective, the work of which is produced by Walid Raad. He lives and works in New York, where he is currently a professor at the School of Art at the Cooper Union School of Art.
Michelle Grabner is an artist, curator, and critic based in Wisconsin. She is the Crown Family Professor of Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she has taught since 1996. She has curated several important exhibitions, including the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art along with Anthony Elms and Stuart Comer, and FRONT International, the 2016 Portland Biennial at the Oregon Contemporary, a triennial exhibition in Cleveland, Ohio in 2018. In 2014, Grabner was named one of the 100 most powerful women in art and in 2019, she was named a 2019 National Academy of Design's Academician, a lifetime honor. In 2021, Grabner was named a Guggenheim Fellow by The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
K8 Hardy is an American artist and filmmaker. Hardy's work spans painting, sculpture, video, and photography and her work has been exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern, Tensta Konsthalle, Karma International, and the Dallas Contemporary. Hardy's work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. She is a founding member of the queer feminist artist collective and journal LTTR. She lives and works in New York, New York.
Akram Zaatari is a filmmaker, photographer, archival artist and curator. In 1997, he co-founded the Arab Image Foundation with photographers Fouad Elkoury, and Samer Mohdad. His work is largely based on collecting, studying and archiving the photographic history of the Arab World.
A. L. Steiner is an American multimedia artist, author and educator, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her solo and collaborative art projects use constructions of photography, video, installation, collage, and performance. Steiner's art incorporates queer and eco-feminist elements. She is a collective member of the musical group Chicks on Speed; and, along with Nicole Eisenman, is a co-curator/co-founder of Ridykeulous, a curatorial project that encourages the exhibitions of queer and feminist art.
Omar Kholeif is an Egyptian-born artist, curator, writer and editor. Kholeif's curatorial practice focuses on art that intersects with the internet, as well as works of art from emerging geographic territories that have yet to be seen in the mainstream.
Erin Christovale is a Los Angeles–based curator and programmer who currently works as a curator at the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles. Together with Hammer Museum Senior Curator Anne Ellegood, Christovale curated the museum's fourth Made in L.A. biennial in June 2018. She also leads Black Radical Imagination, an experimental film program she co-founded with Amir George. Black Radical Imagination tours internationally and has screened at MoMA PS1; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museo Taller Jose Clemente Orozco, among other spaces. Christovale is best known for her work on identity, race and historical legacy. Prior to her appointment at the Hammer Museum, Christovale worked as a curator at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.
Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi is a Nigerian artist, art historian, and curator, currently curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was raised in Enugu and studied under sculptor El Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before traveling as an artist and curator. In the United States, he completed his doctorate at Emory University in 2013 and became the curator of African art at Dartmouth College's Hood Museum of Art. In 2017, he moved to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Nzewi has curated the Nigerian Afrika Heritage Biennial three times, the Dak'Art biennial in 2014, and independent exhibitions at Atlanta's High Museum of Art and New York's Richard Taittinger Gallery. Nzewi also exhibited internationally as an artist and artist-in-resident.
Claire Tancons is a curator, critic, and historian of art. She was born in Guadeloupe and is currently based in Paris, after spending three years in Berlin and eighteen in the US, of which she lived a decade in New Orleans.
Matt Saunders is a contemporary artist who is known for his work across diverse media, including painting, photography, video installation and printmaking.
Jane Panetta is a New York–based curator and art historian. Panetta is currently an associate curator at the [[Whitney Museum of American Art
Mia Locks is a contemporary art curator and museum leader.
Christopher Y. Lew is an American art curator and writer based in New York City. Lew is currently the Nancy and Fred Poses Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Leeza Ahmady is an Afghan-born American independent curator, author, arts administrator, dance instructor, and educator; she is known for her work within the genre of Central Asian art. She is the founder of AhmadyArts and Director of Asia Contemporary Art Week (ACAW) since 2006. Ahmady has organized large-scale festivals, exhibitions, artistic collaborations, and experimental forums revolving around contemporary art practices from across all regions of Asia. Ahmady is New York based and was born and raised in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Gallery House, London was a nonprofit art space founded in 1972 by Sigi Krauss, which was open for sixteen months until its abrupt closure in 1973. Gallery House hosted exhibitions, residencies, performances, "happenings", and events.
Michelle Kuo is an American curator, writer, and art historian. Since 2018, Kuo has been a curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art. She was previously editor-in-chief of Artforum magazine starting in 2010.