ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, NY, July 2019 - The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce that distinguished scholar, curator, and educator Nana Adusei-Poku will join CCS Bard as Senior Academic Advisor and Luma Foundation Fellow. In this role, Adusei-Poku will collaborate with the staff and faculty to develop and advise on the curriculum, which centers around the study of contemporary art, the institutions and practices of exhibition-making, and the theory and criticism of the visual arts. She will also work with Executive Director Tom Eccles, Chief Curator and Graduate Program Director Lauren Cornell and faculty, to develop the curatorial and publishing program at CCS Bard, including symposia, conferences, performance, and exhibitions at the Center for Curatorial Studies and in collaboration with partners, including departments across Bard College and contemporary art institutions.
“Nana Adusei-Poku is an exceptional scholar, curator, and teacher. Her intellectual rigor and commitment to original research will be invaluable to our program and to future classes of CCS Bard graduate students,” said Cornell. Previously, Adusei-Poku served as Visiting Professor at The Cooper Union, and as a Guest Lecturer in the Department Art and Media at the University of the Arts, Zurich. She was Research Professor for Visual Cultures (2015-17) and for Cultural Diversity (2013-14) at the Hogeschool Rotterdam with affiliation to the Piet Zwart Institute and Willem de Kooning Academy. She received her Ph.D. from Humboldt University Berlin following degrees in African and gender studies, and in media and communications at Goldsmiths College London. She has also been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Ghana, Legon, the London School of Economics, and Columbia University, New York.
She is the curator of the program Longing on a Large Scale in conjunction with Todd Gray’s exhibition Eucledian Gris Gris at Pomona College Museum of Art, which starts in September 2019 and will run until May 2020. In 2018, Adusei-Poku curated the immersive event performance of No-thingness at the Academy of Arts Berlin and, in 2015, she co-curated the exhibition NO HUMANS INVOLVED at Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art Rotterdam. She has published in artist monographs about Leslie Hewitt, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, and Todd Gray, among others, and in publications such as e-flux, multitudes, Le Journal des Laboratoires, Kunstforum International as well as peer-reviewed journals such as Nka Journal for Contemporary African Art, Feministische Studien, and Dark Matter.
Adusei-Poku replaces Jeannine Tang, who joins Eugene Lang College at The New School as Asst. Professor in Modern and Contemporary Art History, after nearly a decade at CCS Bard. In 2018, Tang co-curated The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts. Co, (1983-2004) at the Hessel Museum of Art, a project that exemplified her commitment to building groundbreaking scholarship in contemporary art and curatorial history.
About the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) was founded in 1990 as an exhibition and research center for the study of late twentieth-century and contemporary art and culture and to explore experimental approaches to the presentation of these topics and their impact on our world. Since 1994, the Center for Curatorial Studies and its graduate program have provided one of the world’s most forward thinking teaching and learning environments for the research and practice of contemporary art and curatorship. Broadly interdisciplinary, CCS Bard encourages students, faculty and researchers to question the critical and political dimension of art, its mediation and its social significance. CCS Bard cultivates innovative thinking, radical research and new ways to challenge our understanding of the social and civic values of the visual arts. CCS Bard provides an intensive educational program alongside its public events, exhibitions, and publications, which collectively explore the critical potential of the institutions and practices of exhibition-making. It is uniquely positioned within the larger Center’s tripartite resources, which include the internationally renowned CCS Bard Library and Archives and the Hessel Museum of Art, with its rich permanent collection.
General information on the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College can be found on its website at: ccs.bard.edu.