Lia Gangitano to receive the 2018 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce that Lia Gangitano, is the recipient of the 2018 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. The award will be presented at a gala celebration and dinner on Monday, April 9, 2018 at 6:30pm at Capitale, 130 Bowery, New York City.

Tom Eccles, Executive Director of CCS Bard states: "Lia Gangitano is a champion of daring, emerging, and often under-recognized art. Looking back over more than three decades of exhibitions and curatorial projects, we are delighted to celebrate the significant contribution Lia has made to the cultural life of New York City. In the age of 'global-curating,' the selection panel for this year's award recognized her refreshingly local approach, one that has created and supported a vibrant and fundamentally diverse program built upon a community of ideas and artists.”

In 2001, Lia Gangitano founded PARTICIPANT INC, a not-for-profit art space, presenting exhibitions by Virgil Marti, Charles Atlas, Kathe Burkhart, Michel Auder, Robert Boyd, Breyer P-Orridge, Renée Green, Vaginal Davis, Kembra Pfahler, Greer Lankton, Ellen Cantor, and Baseera Khan, among others. As curator of Thread Waxing Space, NY, her exhibitions, screenings, and performances included Spectacular Optical (1998), Luther Price: Imitation of Life (1999), Børre Sæthre: Module for Mood (2000) and Sigalit Landau (2001). She is editor of Blood and Guts in Hollywood: Two Screenplays by Laura Parnes, and Dead Flowers (2010); as well as the forthcoming anthologies, M Lamar: Negrogothic and The Alternative to What? Thread Waxing Space and the '90s. As associate curator, she co-curated Dress Codes (1993) and Boston School (1995) for The ICA, Boston, and edited New Histories (with Steven Nelson, 1997) and Boston School (1995). She has contributed to publications including Carol Rama: Space Even More than Time; Renée Green, Endless Dreams and Time-based Streams; Lovett/Codagnone; Whitney Biennial 2006-Day for Night; and 2012 Whitney Biennial on Charles Atlas. As curatorial advisor, her exhibitions at MoMA PS1 included Lovett/Codagnone: Interruption of a Course of Action and Lutz Bacher: My Secret Life (2009). She currently teaches at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. She is a Board Member of Primary Information and Dirty Looks; Advisory Board Member of the Outpost Cuts and Burns Residency Program, and John Kelly Performance; and recipient of a Skowhegan Governors’ Award for Outstanding Service to Artists, and the inaugural White Columns/Shoot the Lobster Award.

For more information please contact Ramona Rosenberg at T 845 758 7574 or rrosenberg@bard.edu, or see our website. To purchase tickets online please click here.

About CCS Bard’s Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence
For the past 20 years, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College has celebrated and awarded the individual achievements of a leading curator or curators whose lasting contributions have shaped the way we conceive of exhibition-making today. The 2018 award will once again be given under the name of patron Audrey Irmas, who has bestowed the endowment for the Award. Irmas is a board member emeritus of CCS Bard and an active member of the Los Angeles arts and philanthropic community.

The awardee is selected by an independent panel of leading contemporary art curators, museum directors, and artists. Past recipients include Harald Szeemann (1998), Marcia Tucker (1999), Kasper König (2000), Paul Schimmel (2001), Susanne Ghez (2002), Kynaston McShine (2003), Walter Hopps (2004), Kathy Halbreich and Mari Carmen Ramírez (2005), Lynne Cooke and Vasif Kortun (2006), Alanna Heiss (2007), Catherine David (2008), Okwui Enwezor (2009), Lucy Lippard (2010), Helen Molesworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist (2011), Ann Goldstein (2012), Elisabeth Sussman (2013), Charles Esche (2014), Christine Tohme and Martha Wilson (2015), Thelma Golden (2016), and Nicholas Serota (2017). The award has been designed by artist Lawrence Weiner, and is based on his 2006 commission Bard Enter, conceived for the entrance to the Hessel Museum of Art at CCS Bard. The award also comes with the Audrey Irmas Prize of USD 25,000.