Ralph Rugoff

(55th Venice Biennale Curator and Hayward Gallery Director)

in conversation with FHI Social Practice Lab Director Pedro Lasch

with a response from Franklin Humanities Institute Director Ranjana Khanna

Ralph Rugoff is the Curator and Artistic Director of the 2019 Venice Biennale of Art, May You Live in Interesting Times.  In 2015 he served as Guest Curator of the XIII Biennale de Lyon in 2015 titled La vie moderne. He has been the Director of the Hayward Gallery of London since 2006, where he has curated numerous group shows including The Painting of Modern Life (2007), Psycho Buildings (2008), and The Infinite Mix (2016); he also has curated major retrospectives and solo exhibitions by Ed Ruscha, Jeremy Deller, Carsten Holler, Tracey Emin and George Condo.  Before coming to London he was Director (2000-06) of CCA Wattis Institute, at California College of the Arts in San Francisco.  Between 1985 and 2002 he wrote art and cultural criticism for numerous periodicals, publishing widely in art magazines as well as newspapers, including Artforum, Artpresse, FlashArt, Frieze, Parkett, Grand Street, The Financial Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Weekly and published a collection of essays, Circus Americanus (1995), in which he explored cultural phenomena of the American West. During the same period he began working as an independent curator, organizing exhibitions such as Just Pathetic (1990) and Scene of the Crime (1997)

Free and open to all, anywhere in the world

Guest bio, registration link, and full calendar information included below

20-22 The Ongoing Biennial – A Weekly Conversation Cycle with International Curators

Every Wednesday 1-2pm (EST/GMT-5)

Jan 27th and May 5th, 2021

Organized by Pedro Lasch and the FHI Social Practice Lab with support from the Franklin Humanities I World Arts Initiative at Duke University, this Conversation Cycle is part of a larger program entitled ’20-22 The Ongoing Biennial’. In person visits with some of our guests will also be presented at a later stage in collaboration with the the AAHVS Department and the Nasher Museum of Art.

Set in the context of an unprecedented pandemic, global shutdowns, and the rethinking of every aspect of exhibition making, our remote conversations will include curators and other international arts professionals. The first year of the public program will focus on short online dialogues with individual guests. Our one hour long remote events will begin with a casual interview, focusing on the particular trajectory and ideas of each guest in the series, followed by comments from a respondent and questions from the audience. Within this format, we also hope to provide an opportunity for joint reflection on these highly unusual times. Programming for the second year will be announced at a time of greater certainty.

One-time registration at this link will give you access to all of these free and public events:

https://duke.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEsd-uhrDgiE9dKfiHakJ_kA58R76wSVlH9

See full calendar below and click on guest names to see bios and more information for each week：

Jan 27 – Ralph Rugoff

Feb 3 – Cuauhtémoc Medina

Feb 10 – Trevor Schoonmaker

Feb 17 – Candice Hopkins

Feb 24 – Lucia Pietrioiusti

Mar 3 – Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Mar 10 [Break]

Mar 17 – Andrea Giunta

Mar 24 – Yuko Hasegawa

Mar 31 – Miguel López

Apr 7 – José Roca

Apr 14 – Gabi Ngcobo

Apr 21 – Hoor Al Qasimi

Apr 28 – Rujeko Hockley

May 5 – Ruangrupa