Walker Art Center Appoints Visual Arts Curator and Curator at Large

The Walker Art Center announces the appointments of Performa Curator Adrienne Edwards as Curator at Large, Visual Arts and #vincenzodebellis 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 #contemporaryart, which he has led as Artistic Director since 2012.

“Adrienne Edwards and #vincenzodebellis 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, #vincenzodebellis 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 #contemporaryart in Milan since 2012. Previously de Bellis held curatorial roles at the Pastificio Cerere in Rome, the Museion Museum of Modern and #contemporaryart in Bolzano, and Gallery of Modern and #contemporaryart in Bergamo. De Bellis is a contributor to numerous exhibition catalogues and art publications, includingArtforum.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.