MINNEAPOLIS, March 24, 2016—The Walker Art Center announces the appointments of Performa Curator Adrienne Edwards as Curator at Large, Visual Arts and Vincenzo de Bellis as Curator, Visual Arts. Based in New York, Edwards will continue in her senior role at Performa as curator and as the head of programming at the Performa Institute. Edwards is also a PhD candidate in performance studies at New York University. Relocating from Milan, de Bellis joins the Walker from the Peep-Hole Art Center, which he cofounded in 2009, and the Milan International Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art, which he has led as Artistic Director since 2012.
“Adrienne Edwards and Vincenzo de Bellis are two of the most exciting and dynamic
curators in contemporary interdisciplinary practice, bringing breadth of experience and
global reach to the Walker Art Center,” said Fionn Meade, Walker Art Center Artistic
Director. “I am thrilled to welcome their expertise and vision to the Walker’s leadership
in artistic programming, commitment to scholarship, and risk-taking innovation across
platforms.”
“Bringing Vincenzo’s and Adrienne’s talents to the Walker’s visual arts curatorial team
is exciting as we look to inaugurate our redeveloped 19-acre campus in June 2017,”
added Olga Viso, Walker Art Center Executive Director. “They will bring great energy as
we seek to activate gallery, stage, and garden with newly commissioned artworks
inside and out.”
Adrienne Edwards
As Curator at Large, Visual Arts, Edwards brings experience in groundbreaking
contemporary performance-based practice within visual arts to help model new
approaches for curating, commissioning, developing, and presenting the work of
interdisciplinary artists across platforms. Edwards will work within the Walker’s visual
arts department to develop and implement artist projects and exhibitions, and expand
interdisciplinary scholarship and research while making key contributions to the
Walker’s acquisitions planning. She joins the staff in April 2016 and will commute regularly between New York City and Minneapolis under this dual appointment.
“We are delighted for this new opportunity to share expertise across our two
institutions and explore new partnership models. Adrienne has been with Performa for
six of its ten years, acquiring the unique expertise in curating that Performa has
pioneered, which is equal parts curator and producer. We are thrilled that she will be
working with the Walker Art Center team to build on the Walker’s important history of
interdisciplinary exhibitions, and to add her scholarship and unique vision to their
program for the future,” said RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director and Curator of
Performa.
Adrienne Edwards is a PhD candidate in performance studies at New York University
and Curator at Performa, where since 2010 she has contributed to the year-round
programming of the organization, to the Performa biennial, and to Performa’s
institutional collaborations with the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Studio
Museum in Harlem, New York. Her curatorial work includes a focus on artists of the
African Diaspora and the Global South, including a recent Curatorial Fellowship
awarded to Performa for Research supported by the Warhol Foundation to research
approaches to experimentation in interdisciplinary art in Africa. For Performa Edwards
has curated programs, projects, and productions with a wide range of artists including
Performa Commissions by Edgar Arceneaux, Juliana Huxtable, Rashid Johnson, and
Laura Lima, in addition to projects and productions by Ralph Lemon, Senga Nengudi,
Lorraine O’Grady, Adam Pendleton, Dave McKenzie, and Carrie Mae Weems. Recent
projects have included organizing and co-organizing Fluxus founding member Benjamin
Patterson’s first retrospective concert Action as Composition (2013) and Pope.L’s Cage
Unrequited (2013) for Performa 13, and Jonathas de Andrade’s A Study of Race and
Class – Bahia >< New York (2015) and Chimurenga’s Library for Performa 15. Edwards
is a contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues and art publications, including
Aperture, Art in America, Artforum.com, and Spike Art Quarterly, and has given talks
and presentations at a range of symposia and discursive platforms, including at Bienal
de São Paulo, Johann Jacobs Museum, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Modern
Art New York, Para Site International Conference Hong Kong, Studio Museum in
Harlem New York, Whitechapel Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New
York University, Stanford and Northwestern University, among others. She received her
MA in performance studies, New York University; MA in art history and museum
studies, Seton Hall University, New Jersey; and BA in history and art history, Spelman
College, Atlanta.
Vincenzo de Bellis
In the role of Curator, Visual Arts, Vincenzo de Bellis brings a history of generating
large-scale international programs to a variety of diverse Walker exhibitions, including
collections-based shows, special presentations, and productions of new commissions
across artistic platforms. He will take a lead role in grant-driven and campus-wide
initiatives, including the Walker campus and Minneapolis Sculpture Garden
redevelopment, and help steward acquisitions within the permanent collection. His
tenure at the Walker will begin at a date yet to be determined pending the completion
of his visa status.
Before joining the Walker, de Bellis was director of the Peep-Hole Art Center in Milan,
which he cofounded in 2009. There he produced a range of global exhibitions with
artists including Mario García Torres, Ahmet Ogut, Renata Lucas, Pavel Buchler, Gabriel
Sierra, Rosalind Nashashibi, and Trisha Baga as well as publications with Jimmie Durham, Liam Gillick, Chistodolous Panayioutu, Alejandro Cesarco, Dora Garcia, and Judith Hopf. De Bellis recently curated Ennesima, an Exhibition of Seven Exhibitions at Triennale di Milano and a solo exhibition by Betty Woodman at ICA, London and Museo Marino Marini, Florence. He has also held the position of Artistic Director of the International Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art in Milan since 2012. Previously de Bellis held curatorial roles at the Pastificio Cerere in Rome, the Museion Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano, and Gallery of Modern and Contemporary
Art in Bergamo. De Bellis is a contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues and art
publications, including Artforum.com and Mousse. He received his BA from the
Universita degli Studi di Lecce, Italy; his MA in management for curators, Universita
degli Studi “La Sapienza” di Roma, Italy; and his MA in curatorial studies, Center for
Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York.