Maria Lind has been the Director of the Tensta Konsthall since 2011 and is the Artistic Director for the 11th Gwangju Biennale 2016. She was the director of the graduate programme at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, from 2008–10. Before that, she was the director of lASPIS in Stockholm (2005–07) and the director of the Munich Kunstverein (2002–04). Previously she was the curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (from 1997–2001) and in 1998 co-curated Manifesta 2, Europe’s nomadic biennial of contemporary art. Responsible for the ‘Moderna Museet Projekt', Lind worked with artists on a series of 29 commissions that took place in a temporary project-space, or within or beyond the Museum in Stockholm. She is currently a professor of research at the Art Academy in Oslo. She is the co-editor of the following books: Curating with Light Luggage (2005) and Collected Newsletter; Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (2007); European Cultural Policies 2015; The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art (2008); Contemporary Art and Its Commercial Markets: A Report on Current Conditions and Future Scenarios (2012); Performing the Curatorial: With and Beyond Art (2012) and Art and the F Word: Reflections on the Browning of Europe (2015), all with Sternberg Press. She edited Abstraction as part of MIT’s and Whitechapel Gallery’s series ‘Documents on Contemporary Art’. In 2010 a selection of Maria Lind’s essays, Selected Maria Lind Writing, spanning from 1997–2010, was published by Sternberg Press, edited by Brian Kuan Wood. Lind won the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement in 2009 and was a board member of IKT from 2006–2011.
Visitors 2009
Studied Opera and lived in europe from 1983 to 97. Worked as artist until 97 and exhibited widely among other places; Air de Paris, France; Massimo de Carlo, Milan, Italy; Schipper&Krome, Berlin, Germany, ARS Futura, Zurich, Switzerland. In 1997 inaugurated CAPACETE in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as a production agency and a research residency program. (www.capacete.net).
Elizabeth Thomas is Phyllis Wattis MATRIX Curator at Berkeley Art Museum, where she directs the museum's MATRIX series of contemporary projects by international artists, including recent and upcoming exhibitions with Paul Chan, Martha Colburn, Omer Fast, Mario Garcia Torres, Rosalind Nashashibi, Trevor Paglen, Olivia Plender, Tomas Saraceno, Allison Smith, and Tris Vonna-Michell, among others. Previously, she was an independent curator and writer based in Pittsburgh, PA, organizing 'The Believers', a collaboration with Nato Thompson at MassMoCA, North Adams, USA; The 'F' Word at The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, USA; and 'Empathetic' at Temple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, USA. As Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, USA, she worked intensively on the 2004-5 Carnegie International, as well as overseeing a series of project exhibitions with artists such as Cory Arcangel/Paper Rad, Edgar Arceneaux, Jesse Bransford, Omer Fast, Christian Jankowski, Zon Ito/Ryoko Aoki, and Paul Wood/John Harrison. She also served as curatorial fellow at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA, was a founding editor of the Chicago arts and culture magazine, TenbyTen, and was program coordinator at the Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC, USA. She received her MA in Modern and Contemporary Art History, Theory and Criticism from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA and her BA in Anthropology and Art History from George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. Ms. Thomas has written for numerous catalogues and publications, and lectures often to audiences in museums, universities, and other public venues. She has served as nominator or jurist for many national awards and grants, including Creative Capital, Alpert Awards, Anonymous Was a Woman, and the Heinz Endowments, among others.
Adam Szymczyk is Artistic Director of Documenta 14. He was a co-founder of the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw, at which he worked as a Curator from 1997 till 2003, when he assumed his new post as Director at Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland. In Basel, he organised exhibitions including 'Piotr Uklanski: Earth, Wind and Fire' (2004); 'Tomma Abts' (2005); 'Gustav Metzger: In Memoriam' and 'Lee Lozano: Win First Don't Last Win Last Don't Care' (both 2006); 'Micol Assaël: Chizhevsky Lessons' (2007); 'Danh Vo: Where the Lions Are' (2009); 'Moyra Davey: Speaker Receiver' (2010); 'Sung Hwan Kim: Line Wall' (2011); 'Paul Sietsema and Adriana Lara: S.S.O.R.' (both 2012), as well as group shows including 'Strange Comfort (Afforded by the Profession)' (with Salvatore Lacagnina, 2010), 'How to Work/How to Work (More for) Less' (both in 2011); 'Michel Auder: Stories, Myths, Ironies, and Other Songs: Conceived, Directed, Edited, and Produced by M. Auder' (2013) and 'Naeem Mohaiemen: Prisoners of Shothik Itihash' (2014).
In 2008 he co-curated with Elena Filipovic the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art under the title 'When Things Cast No Shadow' and in 2012 he curated 'Olinka, or Where Movement Is Created' at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City. He is a Member of the Board of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. In 2011, he was a recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement at the Menil Foundation in Houston.
Szymczyk's visit in August 2016 coincides with the presentation of Documenta 14's journal South in Kárášjohka, Sápmi (Karasjok, Norway), allowing the Documenta 14 team to encounter current artistic practices and conduct research regarding recent history and developments within communities in Sápmi and northern Norway.
David Elliott is a curator, writer, broadcaster and museum director primarily concerned with modern and contemporary art. Elliott was Director of the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford, England from 1976-96, Director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden from 1996-2001, the founding Director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan from 2001-06 and, in 2007 the first Director of Istanbul Modern, Turkey. From 1998-2004, he was President of CIMAM (the International Committee of ICOM for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) and in 2008, he was the Rudolf Arnheim Guest Professor of Art History at Humboldt University, Berlin. Elliott is Artistic Director for the 17th Biennale of Sydney, 'THE BEAUTY OF DISTANCE: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age' which will take place 12 May to 1 August 2010
Lorenzo Benedetti studied Art history at the University 'La Sapienza' in Rome and attended the 'Curatorial Training Programme' at De Appel Foundation in Amsterdam. Since the late nineties he has curated several exhibitions with emphasis on architecture and urbanism. In 2005 he founded the Sound Art Museum in Rome, a space dedicated to sound in visual art. Benedetti has been the director of the art centre Volume! in Rome (2002-06) and a curator at the Museum Marta Herford, in Herford, Germany (2006-08). He is guest curator at the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere in Rome and La Kunsthalle in Mulhouse, France. His recent projects include 'Eurasia, Geographic Cross-over in Art', Mart, Rovereto, Italy; 'Cabinet of Imagination', Netwerk, Aalst, Belgium; 'Der eigene Weg, Perpektiven Belgischen Kunst', MMK Kuppersmuhle, Duisburg, Germany; 'La Notte and The Garden of the Forking Paths', La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse, France.