Gala Celebration and Award Presentation in New York City April 1, 2020
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is pleased to announce that Connie Butler, Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum has been selected as the recipient of the 2020 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of CCS Bard. For the past 21 years, the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence has celebrated and awarded the individual achievements of a distinguished curator whose lasting contributions have shaped the way we conceive of exhibition-making today. The award reflects CCS Bard’s commitment to recognizing individuals who have defined new thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to the field of exhibition practice. This year the award will be presented to Butler by artist Andrea Fraser at a gala celebration and dinner co-chaired by Lonti Ebers, CCS Bard Board of Governors, and Martin Eisenberg, Chairman of the CCS Bard Board of Governors, and will take place on April 1, 2020 at One Manhattan West, 395 9th Avenue, in New York City. To purchase tickets or table please contact Ramona Rosenberg at T 845 758 7574 or rrosenberg [at] bard.edu, or see our website.
"Connie Butler represents the best of curating; independently minded, always curious, dedicated to artists and consistently bold in the scope of her exhibitions and choices of subject. Her exhibitions are touchstones of curating in the United States—helping to re-define subjects and the institutions where she works,” -Tom Eccles, Executive Director, CCS Bard
Connie Butler is chief curator at the Hammer Museum at UCLA, where she has organized numerous exhibitions, including the biennial of Los Angeles artists, Made in L.A. (2014); Mark Bradford: Scorched Earth (2015); and Marisa Merz: The Sky Is a Great Space (2017). She also cocurated Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions, which opened at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in April 2018 and at the Hammer in October 2018; Andrea Fraser: Men on the Line (2019), and Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence, a retrospective exhibition that opened at the Hammer in September 2019. From 2006 to 2013 she was the Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she cocurated the first major Lygia Clark retrospective in the United States, Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988 (2014); cocurated On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century (2010); and mounted Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave, the first U.S. retrospective of the artist’s career. Butler also organized the groundbreaking survey WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution (2007) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, where she was curator from 1996 to 2006.
The 2020 award will once again be given under the name of patron Audrey Irmas, who has bestowed the endowment for the Audrey Irmas Prize of USD 25,000. Irmas is an emeritus board member of CCS Bard and an active member of the Los Angeles arts and philanthropic community. 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. Event venue provided by Brookfield Properties with additional generous support from Lonti Ebers.
