ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has named art historian and distinguished writer Johanna Burton as director of the graduate program for its two-year Master of Arts program in Curatorial Studies. Currently Associate Director and Senior Faculty Member at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, Burton has been involved with the CCS in various capacities since 2005. She will take her new position at Bard on July 1, 2010.
As director of the graduate program, Burton will be responsible for all aspects of the Center’s academic program, including curriculum and faculty development, supervising student-curated projects, directing research initiatives for the CCS, and organizing the Center’s artist- and curator-in-residence program. Burton will work closely with CCS executive director Tom Eccles to further enhance the Center’s pedagogical mission to be an innovative center for the study of curatorial practice and the history of contemporary art. Burton takes the position formerly held by curator Maria Lind, who has served as director of the CCS graduate program since January 2008.
For more than a decade, Burton has been widely recognized for her critical writing on contemporary art and artists, and her articles and reviews have appeared in journals and publications including Artforum, Art Journal, Parkett, October, and Texte Zur Kunst, as well as in numerous exhibition catalogues for institutions throughout the world such as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zurich; The Power Plant, Toronto; Tate Modern, London; and U.S. museums and alternative venues such as the Museum of Modern Art; the Hirshhorn Museum; the Wexner Center for the Arts; the Hammer Museum, Art in General, the Drawing Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, and many others. In 2006, Burton edited a volume of selected essays on Cindy Sherman, published by MIT Press’s OCTOBER Files series. She has also contributed essays to numerous books on contemporary art including Cy Twombly, States of Mind (Vienna: MUMOK); Mel Bochner: Language (New Haven: Yale University Press); Canvases and Careers Today (Frankfurt: Sternberg Press); Witness to Her Art (Annandale-on-Hudson: Center for Curatorial Studies); T.J. Wilcox (Zurich: JRP Ringier); Words Without Pictures (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art); and, most recently, Mixed Use Manhattan (Madrid: Reina Sofia). Burton attended the Whitney Independent Study Program (Critical Studies track) from 2000-2001. She is completing her Ph.D. in Art History at Princeton University, where she earned her M.A. in January 2005. She also holds an M.Phil degree in Performance Studies from New York University (2002); an M.A. in Art History, Criticism, and Theory from the State University of New York, Stonybrook (1999); and a B.A. in Art History from the University of Nevada, Reno (1997).