VAN ALEN INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES NEW YORK PRIZE FELLOWS
NAMES HANS ULRICH OBRIST INAUGURAL SENIOR FELLOW
Van Alen Institute announced on Wednesday the recipients of the 2007-2008 New York Prize Fellowship.
The Institute has long served as an architectural and educational resource, supporting fellowships abroad at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the American Academy in Rome. Today the Institute sustains and strengthens this legacy with the founding of an annual prize, established to bring practitioners and scholars to its headquarters in New York City to pursue advanced independent research and to generate public programs.
Internationally renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist has been awarded the inaugural New York Prize Senior Fellowship. Appointed Senior Fellows are accomplished thinkers, artists and practitioners who have a demonstrated record of exceptional work and are identified as leaders in their fields.
Mr. Obrist is Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Prior to this position he was Curator of the Musée dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris since 2000, as well as curator of museum in progress, Vienna. He has curated over 150 exhibitions internationally since 1991, including do it, Take Me, Im Yours (Serpentine Gallery), Cities on the Move, Live/Life, Nuit Blanche, 1st Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 1, and more recently Uncertain States of America, 1st Moscow Triennale and 2nd Guangzhou Triennale (Canton, China). Obrist has also co-curated many monographic shows at Musée dArt Moderne de la Ville de Paris, including the work of Olafur Eliasson, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Anri Sala, Pierre Huyghe, Steve McQueen and Doug Aitken.
Furthering his lifelong “Interviews Project,” Obrist will produce a New York-based interviews series to be conducted at Van Alen Institute during his 2007-2008 tenure as Senior Fellow.
“The Interviews Project is a remarkable model for the presentation and re-presentation of diverse public practices, said Van Alen Institute Executive Director Adi Shamir. “Hans Ulrich’s ongoing projects across architecture, arts, science, philosophy and other fields demonstrate an unceasing commitment to public programs as flexible platforms for the collective production of knowledge, rather than static showcases for personalities and positions.”
“It is a great pleasure and a privilege to be part of the Van Alen Institute and its history of building bridges between disciplines,” added Obrist. “As Alexander Dorner said: We can only understand the forces effective in art if we look at the other fields of knowledge.”
Additionally, five New York Prize early to mid-career fellowships were awarded through a competitive open application process. Fellows will join the Institute for periods of three months each to generate independent public projects including exhibitions, installations and symposia on the most significant issues shaping the conception, design and use of public space today.
The 2007-2008 New York Prize Fellows are:
Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin of New York, New York; Jennifer Toy and Chelina Odbert of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Joerg Stollman and Dirk Hebel of Zurich, Switzerland; Ellen Grimes of Chicago, Illinois; and John Stuart of Miami Beach, Florida.
Fellows were selected on Saturday by a distinguished council of design practitioners, scholars and artists including Kadambari Baxi (imageMachine, Martin/Baxi Architects), Ann Hamilton (Artist), Enrique Norten (TEN Arquitectos), Gaetano Pesce (Designer and Architect), Chris Reed (StoSS Landscape Urbanism), Deyan Sudjic (Design Museum, London), and Sarah Whiting (WW Architecture).
The winning projects engage public politics through economics, material, ecology, technology, and discourse, said Fellowship Council member Sarah Whiting. As a collective, these fellows who all truly impressed us with their energies and accomplishments will create a public buzz that will help shift our understanding of the public sphere to mean not just public space, but public project.”
Detailed information about fellows’ individual projects will be featured on the Institute’s New York Prize Fellowship website.
An event will be held during the 2007-2008 fellowship year to celebrate the inaugural New York Prize fellows and council members.
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Van Alen Institute is an independent nonprofit architectural organization whose mission is to promote inquiry into the processes that shape the design of the public realm. For over a century, the Institute has cultivated a fellowship of architecture and design practitioners and scholars, awarded excellence in design, and fostered dialogue about architecture as a public practice. Today, as conventionally defined fields of knowledge give way to new disciplines and alternative methodologies, Van Alen Institute reclaims its legacy as an architectural institute that is dedicated to contemporary forms of public space and new configurations of spatial practice. The Institute develops and presents programs that inform debate and advance design through competitions and fellowships, related forums, publications and exhibitions.
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