James Putnam is an independent curator and writer best known for his creative, innovative approach to curating and juxtaposing contemporary art with historic museum collections.

Life and work

James Putnam was born in Walthamstow, London. He attended the City of London School and went on to study History of Art at the University of London. Putnam became a curator in the Egyptian Antiquities Department of the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

, and in 1994, he initiated and organized the ‘Time Machine’ exhibition juxtaposing the work of contemporary artists with ancient sculptures. He subsequently curated a new version of the exhibition at the

Museo Egizio The Museo Egizio (Italian language, Italian for Egyptian Museum) is an archaeological museum in Turin, Piedmont, Italy, specializing in Art of Ancient Egypt, Egyptian archaeology and anthropology. It houses List of museums of Egyptian antiquitie ...

, Turin, and many other museum interventions at the British Museum with works by

Henry Moore Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English artist. He is best known for his semi- abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced ...

, Richard Wentworth and Fred Wilson. His uses of ‘museum intervention’, ‘museum effect’ and ‘the museum as medium’ in the writings and curatorial statements have sparked research interests in museology and had profound impact on curatorial literature. Other activities in the early 1990s included a stint as a visual artist and a musician when he formed the experimental rock band GOD together with Phil Gray & Richard Dyer to tour UK extensively before disbanding. The band reformed in 2015 to play a gig at the Red Gallery during the

Frieze Art Fair Frieze Art Fair is an international contemporary art fair in London, New York, and Los Angeles. Frieze London takes place every October in London's Regent's Park. In the US, the fair ran on New York's Randall's Island from 2012–19 and in 2 ...

. Between 1999 and 2003, he founded and directed the British Museum's Contemporary Arts & Cultures Programme, which staged performances and talks by

Tracey Emin Tracey Karima Emin, Order of the British Empire, CBE, Associate of the Royal Academy, RA (; born 3 July 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawi ...

Vivienne Westwood Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood (née Swire; born 8 April 1941) is an English fashion designer and businesswoman, largely responsible for bringing modern punk and new wave fashions into the mainstream. Westwood came to public notice when she m ...

Cai Guo-Qiang Cai Guo-Qiang (; born 8 December 1957) is a Chinese artist who currently lives and works in New York City and New Jersey. Biography Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, China. His father, Cai Ruiqin, was a calligrapher ...

Antony Gormley Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (born 30 August 1950) is a British sculptor. His works include the ''Angel of the North'', a public sculpture in Gateshead in the north of England, commissioned in 1994 and erected in February 1998; ''Another Pla ...

Grayson Perry Grayson Perry (born 1960) is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "pre ...

Sarah Lucas Sarah Lucas (born 1962) is an English artist. She is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during the 1990s. Her works frequently employ visual puns and bawdy humour by incorporating photography, collage and found objects. ...

Gavin Turk Gavin Turk (born 1967) is a British artist from Guildford in Surrey, and is considered to be one of the Young British Artists.Tate Modern. (2009)'Pop Life: Art in a Material World' Retrieved 14 August 2012. Turk's oeuvre deals with issues of aut ...

, Jake & Dinos Chapman and Michael Craig Martin.

Teaching and curatorial activities

After leaving the British Museum, he became a visiting scholar in Museology Programme at New York University and curated numerous international exhibitions including Arte All’Arte 9, Tuscany (2004). He was also a guest curator for

Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (ETAT) is an international contemporary art festival held once every three years in Niigata prefecture, Japan. The festival was created by the Tokyo commercial gallery Art Front Gallery (AFG) and is directed by ...

, Japan (2005-6) and the Busan Biennial in South Korea (2010). In the summer of 2016, he co-curated ‘Daydreaming with Stanley Kubrick’ at Somerset House with musician and DJ James Lavelle; the exhibition comprised immersive multi-media installations by 45 contemporary artists and musicians inspired by Kubrick's films. He is currently Senior Research Fellow Exhibitions at the University of the Arts, London. His ongoing curating projects include large-scale collateral projects for the prestigious Venice Biennales from 2007 to 2017 (52nd~57th Edition), and a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions that he collaborates with

Sophie Calle Sophie Calle (born 9 October 1953) is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement known as Oulipo. ...

Andy Hope 1930 Andy Hope 1930 (born Andreas Hofer) is a German artist. Since 1998, most of his work has been signed "Andy Hope 1930" (although at that time the artist was still named Andreas Hofer).Barbara Fischer, ''Universum - Multiversum, Künstler Kritische ...

Ellen Gallagher Ellen Gallagher (born December 16, 1965) is an American artist. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is held in the permanent collections of many major museums. Her media include painting, works on paper, film and ...

, Mat Collishaw, Noble & Webster, Miroslaw Balka and

in the

Freud Museum The Freud Museum in London is a museum dedicated to Sigmund Freud, located in the house where Freud lived with his family during the last year of his life. In 1938, after escaping Nazi annexation of Austria he came to London via Paris and st ...

, London.

Publications

Putnam has published several books on ancient Egypt including ''An Introduction to Egyptology'', ''Amazing Facts about Ancient Egypt'' and contributed essays to numerous artist catalogues. His best known work, ''Art and Artifact'' (Thames & Hudson, 2000 & 2010), received widespread critical acclaims.

References

External links

* All Art was Once Contemporary
James Putnam Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Putnam, James Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British curators People from Walthamstow