CCS Bard gala celebration: April 6, 2022
395 Ninth Avenue
New York NY
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) has announced that Valerie Cassel Oliver, the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA), will receive the 2022 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. She will be honored at a gala celebration and dinner in New York City alongside 2020 Award Recipient Connie Butler, Chief Curator at the Hammer Museum at UCLA. For twenty-three years, the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence has celebrated the achievements of a distinguished curator whose lasting contributions have shaped the way we conceive of exhibition-making today. The award, which is accompanied by a 25,000 USD prize, reflects CCS Bard’s commitment to recognizing individuals who have defined new thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to the field of exhibition practice.
The event will take place on Wednesday, April 6, 2022, at Manhattan West Plaza in New York City and is co-chaired by Lonti Ebers, CCS Bard Board of Governors member, and Martin Eisenberg, Chairman of the CCS Bard Board of Governors. The event is supported by Lonti Ebers.
To purchase tickets or for more information please contact Ramona Rosenberg at T 845 758 7574 or rrosenberg@bard.edu, or see the website.
About Valerie Cassel Oliver
Valerie Cassel Oliver is the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Prior to her position at the VMFA, she was Senior Curator at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Over her curatorial career, she has organized numerous exhibitions including the acclaimed Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (2005); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012) and Howardena Pindell: What Remains to be Seen co organized with Naomi Beckwith (2018). Most recently, she opened the exhibition, The Dirty South: Contemporary Art, Material Culture and the Sonic Impulse, to critical acclaim. The exhibition is currently touring through February, 2023.
Cassel Oliver is the recipient of numerous recognitions and awards including a fellowship from the Center of Curatorial Leadership (2009); the High Museum of Art’s David C. Driskell Award (2011); the James A. Porter Book Award from Howard University (2018) and most recently, the Alain Locke International Arts Award, Detroit Institute of Art, and the College Arts Association’s Excellence in Diversity Award both 2022. She holds an Executive MBA from Columbia University, New York; an MA in art history from Howard University in Washington, D.C., and a BS in communications from the University of Texas at Austin.
About Connie Butler
Connie Butler is the 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 co-curated Adrian Piper: A Synthesis of Intuitions which was organized by The Museum of Modern Art and traveled to the Hammer Museum in 2018; Andrea Fraser: Men on the Line, (2019), Lari Pittman: Declaration of Independence (2019) and Witch Hunt (2021) in partnership with ICA, LA. From 2006–2013 she was The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York where she co-curated the first major Lygia Clark retrospective in the United States, Lygia Clark: The Abandonment of Art, 1948–1988 (2014); and co-curated 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 1996–2006.
About the Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence
Launched at CCS Bard in 1998 to recognize groundbreaking visionaries in the curatorial field, the Award for Curatorial Excellence is selected by an independent panel of leading contemporary art curators, museum directors, and artists. The award is named in recognition of patron Audrey Irmas, who bestowed the endowment for the Audrey Irmas Prize of 25,000 USD. Irmas is an emeritus board member of CCS Bard and an active member of the Los Angeles arts and philanthropic community. The award itself is 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.
