ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has named distinguished curator Maria Lind as director of the Graduate Program for its two-year Master of Arts program in Curatorial Studies. One of the most accomplished curators of her generation, Lind will be responsible for all aspects of the Center’s academic program and activities, including the curriculum, the development of CCS faculty and student body, and the Center’s research programs. She will take her position at CCS on January 1, 2008.
Lind takes the position formerly held by Norton Batkin, who was named Dean of Graduate Studies at Bard College in 2006 and has served as director of the CCS graduate program since 1991. Following the completion of a major renovation and expansion with the addition of the Hessel Museum of Art in November 2006, the appointment comes at a time of continued growth at the CCS. Lind will work closely with CCS executive director Tom Eccles to further enhance the Center’s growing reputation as an innovative center for the exhibition of contemporary art and the study of curatorial practice.
Maria Lind is currently director of Iaspis, the International Artist Studio Program in Sweden, in Stockholm, where she has organized exhibitions with Andrea Geyer, Ibon Aranberri, Tommy Stöckel, and Saskia Holmkvist and cocurated a series of symposia, including “Citizenship: Changing Conditions,” “Why Archives?” and “Tendencies in Time,” six seminars on topical tendencies in the production, presentation, mediation, and preservation of contemporary art. Previously, she was director at the Munich Kunstverein (2002-2004), where she and the team ran an experimental program involving artists such as Philippe Parreno, Annika Eriksson, Marion von Osten, and Deimantas Narkevicius. The format of a retrospective, or survey, was explored in a one-year long retrospective with Christine Borland 2002-2003, where only one piece was shown at a time, and a retrospective project in the form of a seven-day long workshop with Rirkrit Tiravanija in 2004. She was a curator at Moderna Museet in Stockholm (1997-2001), where, among other exhibitions, she organized Moderna Museet Projekts, a series of 29 artist commissions in spaces inside and outside the museum. She founded the independent art platform, Salon 3 (London, 1998-2000), with Rebecca Gordon Nesbit and Hans Ulrich Obrist; she was cocurator of Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg (1998); and she has curated or co-curated exhibitions in Slovenia, Macedonia, Liechtenstein, Norway, Brazil, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Scotland, and the United States. Her publications include numerous exhibition catalogue essays, including Fresh Cream (2000), Curating with Light Luggage (Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst) and Taking the Matter into Common Hands: Collaborative Practices in Contemporary Art (Blackdog Publishing). She was a critic at the daily Svenska Dagbladet (1993-97) and she co-edited the Nordic review Index (1995-98). Maria Lind took her master’s degree in art history and Russian at the University of Stockholm and was in the critical studies track of the Whitney Independent Studies Program.