UCCA, in collaboration with Independent Curators International (ICI) to host first Curatorial Intensive in China

Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, have accepted thirteen young professional curators working around the world to participate in “The Museum of the Future?: Curating Institutions”, the first Curatorial Intensive to be held in China.

Developed by ICI, and taking place from August 5 -11, 2012, the short-course training program will use curatorial thinking to examine strategies for creatively building infrastructures for contemporary art that respond to the changing needs of artists and new art publics. Since the “Experimental Institutionalism” that arose in Europe at the beginning of the new millennium, curators have increasingly taken on directorial roles to establish new precedents for programming institutions and challenging traditional exhibition formats. Now, worldwide, we are witnessing the development of an incredible range of institutions - from the smallest and most itinerant to vast exhibition halls amidst the mega-complex - that are responding to the social and political contexts through which they arise. This seven-day program will explore the historical precedents, new models, and emergent curatorial practices that are influencing the infrastructures for art through an intensive schedule of seminars, site visits, individual meetings, and roundtable discussions.

Global perspectives on these issues will be represented, with guest speaker faculty including Zdenka Badovinac (Director, Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana), Tobias Berger (Curator, M+ Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong), Zoe Butt (Curator and Director of Programs and Development, Sàn Art, Ho Chi Minh City), Doryun Chong (Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture, MoMA, New York), Kate Fowle (Executive Director, ICI, New York), Wang Huangsheng (Director, CAFA Art Museum), Mami Kataoka (Chief Curator, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo), Rodrigo Moura (Curator, Instituto Inhotim, Brazil), Colin Chinnery(Curator and Artist), Shen Qibin (former Director, Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai), Terry Smith (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh), Philip Tinari (Director, UCCA, Beijing), and Yu Ding (Vice President, School of Humanities and Director of Arts Management Department, CAFA).

Successful participants had to demonstrate at least three years curatorial experience, submitting a description of a curatorial project to develop through the program and a description of a recent exhibition that had made an impact on them. The collected participants represent a broad international spectrum, coming from Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Japan, Portugal, Romania, Turkey, and the United States.

On Sunday August 5, “THE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE?: CURATING INSTITUTIONS” Curatorial Intensive Beijing Opening Party & Wu Zuoren International Foundation of Fine Arts Young Curator Fund Launching Ceremony will start from 18:00 at UCCA CAFÉ.

On Saturday, August 11, a daylong seminar convened by the faculty and participants will be open to the public, 10am-6pm, in the UCCA Loft. Participants will be presenting the curatorial proposals worked on during the week, as a final planning step in the realization of their projects. On the same day, from 2-3:30pm, a public roundtable will take place in the UCCA Auditorium, in which curators Kate Fowle, Zdenka Badovinac, Zoe Butt, Doryun Chong, Mami Kataoka, and Rodrigo Moura will discuss themes addressed during the week of the Intensive. This session will be moderated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari.

The Curatorial Intensive at UCCA is organized in affiliation with the College of Humanities at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Scholarships for Chinese nationals are supported by the Wu Zuoren Foundation. Scholarships for Turkish nationals are supported by SAHA.