Kate Fowle, the former chief curator of Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, speaks with Serubiri Moses, most recently a curator of the Berlin Biennial, and Xiaoyu Weng, the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Associate Curator of Chinese Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Presented by MA Curatorial Practice.

Following the 1990s biennial boom, curators have been central in creating new institutional forms that have enabled longer-term regional and international networks and collaborations. However, growing pains have become evident as curators' roles and exhibition topics have grown increasingly constrained by the spectacle culture of globalization and stakeholders' geopolitical interests. Given these realities, how might curators embrace a new internationalism?

Kate Fowle was chief curator at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and director-at-large at Independent Curators International (ICI) in New York. From 2009 –2013, she was the executive director of ICI. Previously, she was the inaugural international curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2007 – 2008) and chair of the Master’s Program in Curatorial Practice, which she co-founded in 2002 for California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Before moving to the United States, Fowle was co-director of Smith + Fowle in London. From 1994 – 1996, she was curator at the Towner Art Gallery and Museum in Eastbourne, East Sussex. Fowle’s recent exhibitions at Garage include "David Adjaye: Form, Heft, Material" (2017), "Irina Korina. The Tail Wags the Comet" (2017), "Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art" (2017), "Toward the Source" (2017), "Proof: Francisco Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo" (2016 – 2017), "Urs Fischer. Small Axe" (2016), "Rashid Johnson. Within Our Gates" (2016), "Louise Bourgeois. Structures of Existence: The Cells" (2015-2016), "Rirkrit Tiravanija: Tomorrow Is The Question" (2015), "The New International" (2014), and "John Baldessari: 1+1=1" (2013). Her recent writing includes catalogue texts on Doug Aitken, Rasheed Araeen, John Baldessari, Harrell Fletcher, Ilya Kabakov, Robert Longo, Ari Marcopoulos, Sterling Ruby, Althea Thauberger, and Qiu Zhijie. She has written on curating and exhibition practices for numerous publications and magazines, including Parkett, Modern Painters, Mousse, Art in America, Manifesta Journal, The Exhibitionist and Frieze.

Serubiri Moses is an independent writer and curator. His essays are published in Chimurenga (South Africa), Frieze (U.K.), and C& – Contemporary And (Germany). His research and curatorial projects include: "Life mu City" (2014), a series of public programs with the Goethe Center Kampala, and the biennial contemporary art festival, "KLA ART - UNMAPPED" (2014) among others. He has produced essays on African artists and curators for the online magazine C& – Contemporary And. He was on the curatorial team for the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, curated by Gabi Ngcobo. He has served as faculty and is an alumnus of the Asiko International Art School, and was awarded the 2015 Stadtschreiber residency at the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies.

Xiaoyu Weng was appointed to spearhead The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Chinese Art Initiative in 2015. At the Guggenheim, she has cocurated the exhibitions "Tales of Our Time" (2016 – 2017) and "One Hand Clapping," on view from May 4 through October 21, 2018. Previously she served as the founding director of the Kadist Art Foundation’s Asia Programs, Paris and San Francisco. She launched the Kadist Curatorial Collaboration, which organizes exhibitions that stimulate cultural exchange, and she oversaw artist residencies and the building of the contemporary Asian art collection. From 2009 – 2010, she worked as a curator at the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts (CCA). Her other recent projects include"Soft Crash" at Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo, Italy (2016); "Robert Zhao Renhui: Flies Prefer Yellow" at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2014-15); "Landscape: the virtual, the actual, the possible?" at Guangdong Times Museum, Guangzhou, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2014); "Invisible Hand: Curating as Gesture," the second CAFAM International Biennial at Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing (2014); and "Ming Wong: Making Chinatown" at Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco (2013).

Educated at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and CCA in San Francisco, Weng also has written on contemporary art and visual culture for various periodicals and in numerous catalogues, including those published for the 2012 Gwangju Biennial, 2012 Shenzhen Sculpture Biennial and 2013 Auckland Triennial. She is a contributing editor of Leap, a bilingual magazine dedicated to contemporary art and visual culture from China. Her essay “Working with Archive” won the Artforum Critical Writing Award in 2011. Weng is the recipient of the 2017 Visionary Awards, which are presented by Art in General, New York, to highlight work that champions the transformative power of art and that nurtures and supports diverse artistic talents. Weng was selected for her innovative leadership and singular contributions to the field. She was also the winner of the eighth edition of Premio Lorenzo Bonald per L’Arte Enterprize for international curators in 2015.

Talk

A New Internationalism