Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (2017)

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (born December 2, 1957 in Ridgewood , New Jersey ) is an American - Italian art historian and curator of Bulgarian descent. She was the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13) 2012 in Kassel .

life and work

Christov-Bakargiev grew up in Washington, DC . Her parents met in Turin before emigrating to the USA . Her father was a doctor who had fled Bulgaria to Italy, her mother was an Italian archaeologist . Her parents separated in 1964 and Christov-Bakargiev stayed with his mother. The mother's apartment in Washington was a meeting place for opponents of the Vietnam War , but also young artists and writers.

She has Italian and US citizenship. After completing her baccalaureate at a French school in Washington, she went to Europe and studied literature , philology , languages ​​and art history at the University of Pisa in Italy . In 1981 she completed her studies with a thesis on the relationship between American painting and poetry of the 1950s, with a focus on Frank O'Hara and his relationship to the art of Abstract Expressionism . She then moved to Rome and began writing art reviews for daily newspapers, including Reporter and Il Sole 24 Ore . She was primarily interested in the avant-garde of the early 20th century and contemporary art . She published her reflections on the Italian Arte Povera in a book by Phaidon Press, London, in 1999, and she is recognized worldwide as an expert on this movement.

After working as an independent exhibition maker for a long time, she took on a position as senior curator at New York PS1 , an offshoot of the Museum of Modern Art , in 1999 . She worked there for three years and, among other things, initiated the first edition of “Greater New York” together with other curators of PS1 / MoMA. From 2002 to 2008 she was chief curator of the Museo di Arte Contemporanea in the Castello di Rivoli in Turin and in 2009 she became its interim director. She was active as a curator worldwide, for example in 2008 as director of the 16th Biennale of Sydney with the title “Revolutions - Forms That Turn”. She succeeded in increasing the number of visitors to the Biennale by more than 37% to 435,000 compared to 2006.

On December 3, 2008, Christov-Bakargiev was appointed artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13) , which took place from June 9 to September 16, 2012 in Kassel . After Catherine David, she is the second female curator of documenta and the first American and Italian. After working as a freelance curator, she was reappointed director of the Museo di Arte Contemporanea in the Castello di Rivoli and the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (GAM) in Turin in 2015 .

Art Review 's 'The Power 100' list in November 2012 placed Christov-Bakargiev as the first woman to be the first woman to be influential in modern art, declaring: Christov-Bakargiev was ranked number one on account of her influential and globally ambitious Documenta ... Christov-Bakargiev's expansive curating and her engagement of ideas and practices from outside the sphere of contemporary art were seen to be particularly influential, prompting discussion across the artworld.

She wrote the first monographs on the South African artist William Kentridge (1996/97) and the Canadian artist Janet Cardiff (2011).

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is married to the Italian performance artist Cesare Pietroiusti (* 1955) and has two daughters.

Publications

• Willie Doherty . In the dark, projected works , Kunsthalle Bern, 1996, ISBN 3-85780-108-5
• William Kentridge , Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, 1998, ISBN 90-74816-09-6
• Arte Povera (Themes and Movements) , Phaidon, Berlin 1998, ISBN 978-0714834139
• Janet Cardiff, a survey of works (including collaborations with George Bures Miller) , PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, 2001, ISBN 0-9704428-3-1
• The Moderns , Skira, 2003, ISBN 978-88-8491-544-3
• Pierre Huyghe , Skira, 2004, ISBN 978-88-8491-573-3
• with David Anfam : Franz Kline (1910–1962) , Skira, 2004, ISBN 978-88-8491-866-6

Web links

Commons : Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev  in the German Digital Library
• Search for Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in the SPK digital portal of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation
• Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev as curator of the Biennale of Sydney 2008
• Christov-Bakargiev on the official documenta website .
• Podcast of a conversation between Manfred E. Schuchmann and Christov-Bakargiev in the "HR-Doppelkopf" series (2010)
• Interview Süddeutsche May 31, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ^ Thesis on American art and poetry of the 1950s
2. ↑ Documenta 13: American woman to rule Kassel. Spiegel Online / dpa, December 2, 2008, accessed on December 4, 2008 . 
3. ^ Nicole Büsing, H. Klaas: A power woman for Kassel . In: Kieler Nachrichten , December 4, 2008, p. 22.
4. ↑ Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev tops ArtReview's annual 'Power 100' list
5. ↑ Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev directs documenta 13. Dirk Schwarze, December 2, 2008, accessed on December 4, 2008 . 
6. ↑ Ute Diehl: Cesare Pietroiusti - portrait  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. -. In: Art - Das Kunstmagazin from June 29, 2012