In this talk, speakers Andrée Sfeir-Semler and Tom Eccles reflect on their curatorial practice, institutional leadership, and contemporary artistic discourse.
Andrée Sfeir-Semler is a Lebanese-German art historian, exhibition maker and the owner of the eponymous gallery. She studied fine arts at the American University of Beirut, as well as history and history of art at the university of Bielefeld and at the Sorbonne. She earned her PhD in 1985, and opened her first gallery that same year in the north of Germany (Kiel). She moved to Hamburg in 1998, where the German branch of Sfeir-Semler is still based and in 2005 she opened the first white cube exhibition space in the Arab World: Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Beirut. In all its spaces, Sfeir-Semler Gallery represents artists working in the field of conceptual and minimal art with a focus on human rights. Since 2003, Sfeir-Semler Gallery has focused on contemporary art from the Arab World. Andrée Sfeir-Semler has extensively worked with institutions around the world to present exhibitions by the artists represented by her gallery, and to produce and publish books and catalogues related to the artists and their exhibitions.
Tom Eccles leads the Center for Curatorial Studies, a distinguished curatorial graduate program at Bard College that combines academic research and practical training. He also directs the Hessel Museum of Art at the college. He has organized hundreds of exhibitions and artists’ projects at major museums and foundations both in the US and internationally. He was formerly the director of New York’s Public Art Fund, and since 2018 has worked on the public art program for Qatar.
*Portrait Image Credit :
Tom’s Image : Liam Gillick
Andrée’s Image : Volker Renner