Visitor Series: Eva Respini
Eva Respini is the Barbara Lee Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Boston, where she has been leading the vision of the program since 2015.
Prior to the ICA, she was curator at the Museum of Modern Art, where she organized numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography. Under her leadership, the ICA’s visual arts program has seen increased rigor, diversity, and popular appeal. She led the significant expansion of ICA’s program in 2018 with the opening of the Watershed, a 15,000-square-foot, formerly condemned industrial space, now open for audiences to encounter and experience large-scale and immersive artworks. In keeping with ICA’s history to champion the most innovative art and ideas of our time, her work has brought attention to underrecognized artists or little-explored themes and practices in the art world. She has assembled a stellar curatorial team by creating a culture that supports curators in the pursuit of their expertise and passions.
Specializing in global contemporary art and image-making practices, Respini recently curated the critically acclaimed Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today (2018) and ambitious solo presentations such as William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects (2018), Diana Thater (2018), Liz Deschenes (2016), and Nalini Malani (2016). Her other notable exhibitions include the major retrospective Cindy Sherman (2012) and the surveys Walid Raad (2015) and Robert Heinecken (2014). Respini’s curatorial leadership and commitment to curatorial craft at every level of exhibition-making is evident in all her curatorial projects.
Respini has been a visiting lecturer, critic, and speaker at a number of universities and currently teaches a seminar on curatorial practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Other programs where she has taught and lectured include the School of Visual Arts, Columbia University; Yale University’s School of Art; and the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has published numerous books and catalogues and her writing appears in museum publications and periodicals.
Sponsor
School of Art & Design Visitors Committee