Hayward Gallery Director Ralph
Rugoff was tapped Friday to run the Venice Biennale's art
exhibition in 2019.
Biennale President Paolo Baratta said that "the appointment
of Ralph Rugoff confirms the Biennale's primary goal, to qualify
the Exhibition as a place of encounter between the visitors, the
art and the artists.
"An Exhibition engaging the viewers directly with the
artworks in such a way that memory, the unexpected, the possible
provocation, the new and the different can stimulate their
visions, their minds and their emotions, and offer them the
opportunity for a direct experience."
The show will run from May 11 to November 24 2019.
Rugoff has been appointed Director of the Visual Arts
Department, with specific responsibility for curating the 58th
International Art Exhibition, the Biennale said.
Rugoff has been the Director of the Hayward Gallery of London
since 2006.
Opened in 1968, the Hayward Gallery is considered one of the
most leading public art galleries in the United Kingdom; it is
part of the Southbank Centre, an independent non-profit
organization that receives major funding by the Arts Council of
England.
Rugoff was the Artistic Director of the XIII Biennale de Lyon
in 2015 titled La vie moderne.
Between 1985 and 2002 he wrote art and cultural criticism for
numerous periodicals, publishing widely in art magazines as well
as newspapers, including Artforum, Artpresse, FlashArt, Frieze,
Parkett, Grand Street, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles
Times, The Los Angeles Weekly and published a collection of
essays, Circus Americanus (1995), in which he explored cultural
phenomena of the American West.
During the same period he began working as an independent
curator, organizing exhibitions such as Just Pathetic (1990) and
Scene of the Crime (1997).
A former Director (2000-06) of CCA Wattis Institute, at
California College of the Arts in San Francisco, he has curated
numerous group shows at the Hayward Gallery over the past 11
years, including The Painting of Modern Life (2007), Psycho
Buildings (2008), an exhibition that included interactive and
immersive installations by artists such as Mike Nelson, Gelitin
and Do-ho Suh; and The Infinite Mix (2016); he also has curated
important retrospectives and solo exhibitions by Ed Ruschka,
Jeremy Deller, Carsten Holler, Tracey Emin and George Condo.
photo: Baratta
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