Johanna Burton

Graduate Committee
B.A., University of Nevada, Reno; M.A., SUNY Stony Brook; critical studies, Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program; M. Phil., New York University; Ph.D. candidate, Princeton University. Co-curator, Videodrome II (2002) and Super-ficial: The Surfaces of Architecture in a Digital Age (2003), New Museum of Contemporary Art; curator, For Presentation and Display: Some Art of the ’80s, Princeton University Art Gallery (2005). Editor of Cindy Sherman (MIT Press, 2006). Other publications include essays and articles on Mary Heilmann, Lee Lozano, Guyton/Walker, and Rachel Harrison, among others, and numerous reviews and articles for Artforum, Parkett, and Texte zur Kunst.

Ann Butler

Faculty, CCS Bard; Director of Library and Archives, CCS Bard Library and Archives
Ann Butler is the Director of the Library and Archives at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and the Project Director for Arts Spaces Archives Project (as-ap.org). Prior to joining CCS in August, she was Senior Archivist at the Fales Library and Special Collections at New York University where she helped build a mixed format collection consisting of over 10,000 linear feet of archival materials including 15,000 moving image and audio elements relating to the contemporary and performing arts. Before joining Fales, she was the Archivist for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum where she implemented an enterprise-wide museum archives program for a complex and decentralized global arts institution. Her education includes a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MLS from Rutgers University, and an MA in Media Studies from the New School. Ann Butler has lectured widely on the preservation and documentation of moving image and electronic media works. She has participated in a number of international initiatives focusing on the preservation of cultural heritage materials. Her research interests include the intersection of archives and the contemporary arts; documentation and preservation issues for performance and installation-based works; and the increasing convergence of archives and museum collection management practices for contemporary art-related collections.

Phone: 845.758.7567
E-mail: butler@bard.edu

Christoph Cox

Faculty, CCS Bard; Professor of Philosophy, Hampshire College, MA
Christoph Cox is a critic, theorist and curator of art and music. He is Professor of Philosophy at Hampshire College, where he teaches contemporary European philosophy and aesthetic theory. Cox is the author of Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation (University of California Press, 1999) and co-editor of Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (Continuum, 2004). He is a regular contributor to Artforum and The Wire, and is editor-at-large at Cabinet. Cox has curated exhibitions at The Kitchen (New York City), the Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston), New Langton Arts (San Francisco), and G  Fine Art Gallery (Washington D.C.) and has written catalog essays for exhibitions at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, Mass MoCA, the South London Gallery, Berlin's Akademie der Künste, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Seattle Center and the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. He is currently writing a book about ontology and temporality in sound art from the 1960s to the present.

Tom Eccles

Executive Director, CCS Bard; Graduate Committee
M.A., University of Glasgow. Former public art consultant and project manager, Art in Partnership, Edinburgh, Scotland. Director, Public Art Fund, New York (1996–2005); has organized innovative contemporary art exhibitions for Rockefeller Center, Battery Park City, Park Avenue, Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park, and other city venues; established partnerships with major New York City museums; initiated the In the Public Realm program for emerging artists, and Tuesday Night Talks, a lecture series promoting dialogues between artists, curators, art critics, students, and the public. Has written extensively about contemporary art and lectured at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Phone: 845.758.7596
E-mail: eccles@bard.edu

Liam Gillick

Graduate Committee
Liam Gillick is an artist based in London and New York. Solo exhibitions include The Wood Way, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2002; A short text on the possibility of creating an economy of equivalence, Palais de Tokyo, 2005 and the retrospective project Three Perspectives and a short scenario, Witte de With, Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Zurich and MCA Chicago 2008-2010. In 2006 he co-founded the free art school project “unitednationsplaza” in Berlin. Liam Gillick has published a number of texts that function in parallel to his artwork. Proxemics (Selected writing 1988-2006) JRP-Ringier was published in 2007. The monograph Factories in the Snow by Lilian Haberer, JRP-Ringier, 2007 will soon be joined by an extensive retrospective publication and critical reader. In addition he has contributed to many art magazines and journals including Parkett, Frieze, Art Monthly, October and Art Forum. Liam Gillick has been selected as the artist for the German Pavilion in the Venice Biennale, 2009.

Carles Guerra

Faculty, CCS Bard
Carles Guerra is an artist and critic based in Barcelona whose work investigates dialogical aspects of visual culture. He is Professor of Contemporary Art at the University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona; and has curated exhibitions on Art & Language in Practice (1999), After the News. Postmedia Documentary Practices (2003), Situation Cinema. Joaquín Jordá (2006), and authored an interview with Toni Negri, N for Negri (2000). He is on the editorial board of ‘Cultura/s’ (La Vanguardia) and was appointed Director of Primavera Fotogràfica de Catalunya in 2004.

Tom Keenan

Faculty, CCS Bard; Director, Human Rights Project, Bard College; Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Bard College
B.A., Amherst College; M. Phil., Ph.D., Yale University. Recipient: fellowship, Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture, Rutgers (1991–92); Shorenstein Fellow, Joan Shorenstein Center for Press and Politics, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard (1998). Author, Fables of Responsibility: Aberrations and Predicaments in Ethics and Politics (1997); articles in PMLA, New York Times, Wired, Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, others. Editor, The End(s) of the Museum (1996); coeditor, New Media, Old Media (2005); (1988). Editorial and advisory board member, Journal of Human Rights, Grey Room, WITNESS, Scholars at Risk Network.

Phone: 845.758.7387
E-mail: keenan@bard.edu

Marysia Lewandowska

Faculty, CCS Bard
Marysia Lewandowska is a Polish born artist based in London who, through her collaborative projects, has explored the public function of archives, collections and exhibitions in an age characterized by relentless privatization. She has been collaborating with Neil Cummings since 1995. As artists they have been interested in thinking about and working alongside many of the institutions that choreograph the exchange of values between art and its public. Research has played a central part in all their recent projects which include the book The Value of Things (Birkhauser/August 2000), Give & Take at the V & A Museum and Capital Inaugurating Contemporary Interventions series at Tate Modern (2001).Their Enthusiasm project has recently been shown at The Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Kunst Werke in Berlin and Tapies Foundation in Barcelona in 2005-2006. Enthusiasm explores, through amateur films made by polish factory workers under socialism, the potential and relevance of working outside of “official” culture and its products. Their film project Screen Tests was featured in the British Art Show 6 at several venues across Britain. Social Cinema events were made in collaboration with 51% Studios for the 2006 London Architecture Biennale. Most recently they have developed Generosity Broadcasting House as part of the Protections exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz. Current projects include Future Museum at Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie, Cairo and Arnolfinii, Bristol, and Manifesta7 in Bolzano. Marysia is a Professor of Fine Art at Konstfack in Stockholm where she established Timeline: Artists’ Film and Video Archive. More info:  www.chanceprojects.com, www.enthusiastsarchive.net

Maria Lind

Director, CCS Bard Graduate Program; Graduate Committee
M.A., University of Stockholm; Whitney Independent Studies Program. Director, International Artist Studio Program (IASPIS), Sweden (2005–07); organized exhibitions of Ibon Aranberri, Andrea Geyer, and other artists and cocurated series of symposia including “Citizenship: Changing Conditions,” “Why Archives?” and “Tendencies in Time,” seminars on topical tendencies in the production, presentation, mediation and preservation of contemporary art. Director, Kunstverein München, Munich (2002–04); ran experimental program involving artists such as Annika Eriksson, Deimantas Narkevicius, Marion von Osten, Philippe Parreno, and others, which included yearlong retrospective with Christine Borland (2002–03), showing one piece at a time, and retrospective project in the form of a seven-day workshop with Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004). Curator, Moderna Museet, Stockholm (1997-01); organized Moderna Museet Projekts, series of 29 artist commissions in spaces inside and outside the museum. Founder
(with Rebecca Gordon Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist), Salon 3, independent art platform (London, 1998–2000); cocurator, Manifesta 2, Luxembourg (1998). Publications include Fresh Cream (2000), Curating with Light Luggage (Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst), Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (Blackdog Publishing), and numerous exhibition catalogue essays. Critic, Svenska Dagbladet (1993–97); coeditor, Nordic Review Index (1995–98).

Phone: 845.758.7588
E-mail: lind@bard.edu

Ingrid Schaffner

Graduate Committee
Ingrid Schaffner is Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, where past exhibitions include: The Puppet Show 2008, Karen Kilimnik 2007, Accumulated Vision, Barry Le Va 2005, The Big Nothing 2004, Sarah McEneaney 2004, Trials and Turbulence: Pepón Osorio, an artist’s residence at DHS 2004, Polly Apfelbaum 2003, The Photogenic: Photography through its metaphors in contemporary art 2002, and Richard Tuttle, In Parts, 1998-2001 2001. Working independently, she is the curator of: Jess: To and From the Printed Page 2007, Gloria: Another Look at Feminist Art of the 1970s 2002, About the Bayberry Bush 2001, Hannelore Baron: Works 1967-1987 2001, Pictures, Patents, Monkeys, More…on collecting 2001, Secret Victorians 1999, The Cultured Tourist 1998, Richard Artschwager: Photo/Works 1945-96 1996; Chocolate! 1995.

Schaffner’s work often involves a historic premise or subject within contemporary culture. Her exhibition Deep Storage 1997 featured work by fifty artists (Beuys, Duchamp, Lawler, Kilimnik, Rauschenberg, Rhoades, Warhol, among them, with manuscript material from the Aby Warburg Institute, London) to explore collecting, storing and archiving as imagery and process in contemporary art. Julien Levy: Portrait of an Art Gallery 1998 looked at the New York dealer and collector who championed experimental photography and film, and whose gallery presented a first American exhibition of Surrealism in 1932. Her interest in Surrealism stems from The Return of the Cadavre Exquis 1993 an exhibition with The Drawing Center that involved contemporary artists in the collaborative game of Exquisite Corpse. She has written extensively on modern and contemporary art with essays on Richard Artschwager, Marlene Dumas, Arturo Herrera, Yoshitomo Nara, Isamu Noguchi, among others. Her book Salvador Dalí's Dream of Venus: The Surrealist Funhouse at the 1939 World's Fair was published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Franklin Sirmans

Graduate Committee
Franklin Sirmans is Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston, where he has recently organized NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith. He has also curated Everyday People: 20th Century Photography from The Menil Collection, The David Whitney Bequest, Otabenga Jones: Lessons from Below and Robert Ryman, 1976. Since 2005 he has been a Curatorial Advisor at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, where he has organized shows including work by Louis Cameron, SunTek Chung, Molly Larkey, Curtis Mitchell, Senam Okudzeto, Milton Rosa-Ortiz and Cory Wagner.

He was curator of For the Love of the Game: Race and Sport in America at the Amistad Center/Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford (2007); Basquiat (Brooklyn Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 2005-2006), Make it Now: New Sculpture in New York (Sculpture Center, NY, 2005) and One Planet Under A Groove: Contemporary Art and Hip Hop (Bronx Museum of the Arts, Walker Art Center, Spelman College Art Gallery and Villa Stuck, Munich, 2001-2003). A former Editor of Flash Art and Art AsiaPacific magazines, Sirmans has written for several publications including The New York Times, Essence Magazine, Art in America, Artnews and Grand Street. He has taught art history at Maryland Institute College of Art, Princeton University and SVA, the School of the Visual Arts. He is also a contributing and advisory editor for the journals Callaloo and Gulf Coast.

Sandra Skurvida

Faculty, CCS Bard
As a curator and scholar, Sandra Skurvida sees art practice as a collective engagement in an open field of possibilities, which can help us better understand the world and imagine what can be done to improve it (or, at least not make matters worse). In her view, cultural production creates nothing but the tools for such understanding, which can be found in different times and various disciplines. It is then our task to learn to use them. This implies an interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and heterochronic approach, one which she has been developing over the past several years in her investigations of John Cage’s work in music, visual art, poetry, theater, politics, science, and technology. These investigations serve as a springboard to theoretical considerations in teaching and writing, and have also provided the impetus for an exhibition that will present the complexity of Cage’s influences from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present.

Her previous research (Ph.D dissertation, 2006) has been focused on female performance art, in particular that of Carollee Schneemann. Her curatorial projects to date have been catalyzed by social and political issues: “Custom Car Commandos” (Art in General, 2009) dealt with the crisis in the auto industry; “Soap Box Event” (Federal Hall National Memorial, 2008) – with the civil liberties of free speech; and several public art projects in New York City (“Art Container,” 2002; “Waste Management,” 2005) addressed various aspects of public space. This socio-political perspective also motivated her curating and art criticism in Lithuania from 1991 through 1996 (including the Annual Exhibition of Soros Center for Contemporary Art in 1995), which dealt with post–Cold War conditions and the emergence of global networks and an ahistorical consciousness. 

Jenni Sorkin

Faculty, CCS Bard; Graduate Committee
Jenni Sorkin is a Ph.D candidate in the History of Art Department at Yale University. She was the 2004 recipient of the Art Journal Award and a 2007 graduate research grant from the Center for Craft, Creativity and Design at the University of North Carolina, Hendersonville. Her writing has appeared in the New Art Examiner, Art Monthly, NU: The Nordic Art Review, Modern Painters, and Third Text. She writes regularly for Frieze magazine, and has been a visiting critic at Cal Arts, Ohio University, the Yale School of Art, and the School of Visual Arts. From 2002-2004, she was the Research and Project Coordinator for WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, originating at LA MOCA in 2007. Recent publications include contributions to exhibition catalogs for the Fashion in Film Festival (London, 2008), the Ceramics Research Center at the Arizona State University Museum (Tempe, 2009), the Textile Museum of Canada (Toronto, 2008) and the journal Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture.

Tirdad Zolghadr

Graduate Committee
Licence ès letters (M.A.), Comparative Literature, University of Geneva. Founding member, Shahrzad art and design collective. Director of the documentaries Tehran 1380 (with Solmaz Shahbazi), which won the Young Filmmaker's Award of Duisburg, 2002, and Tropical Modernism, which premiered at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, 2006. Exhibitions include curatorial projects in a wide range of venues. Co-curator, the Sharjah Biennial, 2005. Publications include Softcore, a novel, recently published by Telegram Books, London, and articles and reviews in Bidoun, Frieze, Parkett, among others. Editor-at-large, Cabinet magazine.
zolghadr@bard.edu