NEW IDEAS,
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 8
2:00PM
ARMORY LIVE THEATER
Featuring Stefanie Hessler, Director of Swiss Institute; Sohrab Mohebbi, Director of SculptureCenter; and Mariët Westermann, Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation and moderated by Marko Gluhaich, Associate Editor of frieze magazine.
Highlighting New York as an important cultural capital, this panel brings together museum leaders in the city who engage with and transform the city’s artistic landscape. Together, the panelists will examine visions for institutional growth, audience development, and cultural advancement, discovering new ways that organizations can contribute to the arts ecosystem at large.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
STEFANIE HESSLER
Stefanie Hessler is the Director of Swiss Institute New York. Her work centers artists and ideas through new commissions, transdisciplinary collaborations, and experimental formats. At SI, Hessler co-curated Spora, which invites artists to transform the institution through “environmental institutional critique,” solo shows by Raven Chacon, Ali Cherri, and Lap-See Lam, as well as the East Village-wide exhibition Energies. Other recent exhibitions include Parcours, Art Basel; Sex Ecologies, Kunsthall Trondheim; the 17th Momenta Biennale, Montreal; Rising Tides, Gropius Bau, Berlin; Joan Jonas, Ocean Space, Venice; and the 6th Athens Biennale. Hessler is the author of Prospecting Ocean (MIT Press) and has edited over a dozen volumes. She was named among Apollo’s 40 under 40 and ArtReview’s Power 100.
Photo by Jingyu Lin.
SOHRAB MOHEBBI
Sohrab Mohebbi was appointed Director of SculptureCenter in 2022. He is also serving as the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curator of the 58th Carnegie International, opening in September 2022. Mohebbi has also served as SculptureCenter’s Curator-at-Large (2020-21), and as Curator between 2018 and 2020. Before joining SculptureCenter in 2018, he was associate curator at REDCAT in Los Angeles and curatorial fellow at the Queens Museum. He is an advisor at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam and has organized exhibitions and programs for the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; High Desert Test Sites, Joshua Tree, CA; SALT, Istanbul; and the Center for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg, South Africa. He received an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a BFA in photography from Tehran Art University. Mohebbi has organized solo exhibitions by Banu Cennetoğlu, Fiona Connor, Tishan Hsu, Hassan Khan, John Knight, and Falke Pisano, among others. His group exhibitions include Searching the Sky for Rain (2019), It is obvious from the map (2017; co-curated by Thomas Keenan) and Hotel Theory (2015; with Ruth Estévez), which received The Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award in 2013. In 2012, he was the recipient of a grant from the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Program for his blog presencedocuments.
Courtesy of Sohrab Mohebbi.
MARIËT WESTERMANN
Mariët Westermann is Director and CEO of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, directing its flagship in New York and overseeing the Guggenheim sites in Venice, Bilbao, and Abu Dhabi. Westermann previously was Vice Chancellor and Chief Executive of NYU Abu Dhabi, having been founding Provost. She served as Executive Vice President of the Mellon Foundation and Director of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts. Westermann has published widely on the art of her native Netherlands and on the humanities, arts, and higher education in society. She is a trustee of ALIPH and the Rijksmuseum, and chairs the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund.
Courtesy of Mariët Westermann.
MARKO GLUHAICH
Marko Gluhaich is a writer and associate editor of frieze magazine. At frieze, he edits the columns section and has written about artists Rose Salane, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Nora Turato, and many others. He was previously at Cabinet magazine. He lives and works in New York City.
Photo by Marko Gluhaich.
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