Peter Eleey, Visual Arts Curator, Walker Art Center, has been named the Curator of P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Formerly a curator and producer at Creative Time in New York City, Eleey joined the Walker staff in March 2007. His P.S.1 appointment is effective in July.
“In Peter’s three years at the Walker, he has made meaningful contributions to both the exhibitions and acquisitions program, shaped by his understanding of and sensitivity to artists,” said Walker director Olga Viso. “The Quick and the Dead, which received both critical and popular acclaim, is but one example of his innovative approach, which will continue to flourish when he returns to New York in his new role.”
In addition to curating The Quick and the Dead (2009), Eleey recently organized the Walker exhibitions The Talent Show (currently on view through August 15), and Trisha Brown: So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing (2008). At Creative Time, he oversaw its program and organized numerous exhibitions, major commissions, and public projects with artists including Doug Aitken, Haluk Akakçe, Song Dong, Cai Guo-Qiang, Jim Hodges, Jenny Holzer, Shirazeh Houshiary, Mike Nelson, and Michael Rakowitz. He is a graduate of Yale University. Eleey says, “While I am excited by this new opportunity, I will miss the great staff here and the many committed supporters in the Minneapolis St. Paul community who make the Walker such a wonderful place for a curator to work.”
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, founded in 1971 by Alanna Heiss as the Institute for Art and Urban Resources Inc., is one of the oldest and largest non-profit contemporary art institutions in the United States. An exhibition space rather than a collecting institution, P.S.1 presents work by international emerging and established artists through retrospectives, site-specific installations, historical surveys, and performance. P.S.1 opened its first major exhibition in its permanent location in Long Island City, Queens, in 1976 with the seminal exhibition Rooms, which invited artists to transform the building’s unique spaces and established P.S.1 as a presenter of site-specific art that continues today with long-term installations by James Turrell, Keith Sonnier, Richard Serra, Lawrence Weiner, and others.