Ute Meta Bauer (born 1958). She is an international
curator
A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...
, professor of
contemporary art
Contemporary art is the art of today, produced in the second half of the 20th century or in the 21st century. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art is a dynamic com ...
and the director of the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in
Singapore
Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...
.
Early life and education
Bauer was born in 1958 in
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the ...
,
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
. She studied at the Hochschule der Bildenden Künste,
Hamburg
(male), (female) en, Hamburger(s),
Hamburgian(s)
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, Germany, between 1980-1989. Her diplomas focus on art theory, visual communication and stage design. She has worked as a
free-lance
''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...
curator since 1985.
Career
From 1990 to 1994, Bauer was Artistic Director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, where she programmed several exhibitions and conferences on contemporary art, such as ''Radical Chic'' (1993) and ''A New Spirit in Curating'' (1992). From 1996-2006, Bauer held an appointment at the
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (german: link=no, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien) is a public art school in Vienna, Austria.
History
The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was founded in 1692 as a private academy modelled on the Accademia di Sa ...
in Austria, as a professor of theory and practice of contemporary art.
Bauer served as the Founding Director of the Office for Contemporary Art in Norway from 2002 to 2005. Afterwards, she moved onto
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT), where she acted as Associate Professor for Visual Arts until 2012. She was also the founding director of its Art, Culture, and Technology (ACT) programme.
From 2012 to 2013, Bauer was Dean of Fine Art at the
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It offe ...
in London.
Ute Meta Bauer is the founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in Singapore and has served as Professor of Art at
Nanyang Technological University
The Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a national research university in Singapore. It is the second oldest autonomous university in the country and is considered as one of the most prestigious universities in the world by various inte ...
(NTU)'s School of Art, Media and Design since 2013.
Bauer served as a curator for the 17th Istanbul Biennial in 2022.
Exhibitions
Bauer has curated many exhibitions on contemporary art with a focus on
transdisciplinary
Transdisciplinarity connotes a research strategy that crosses many disciplinary boundaries to create a holistic approach. It applies to research efforts focused on problems that cross the boundaries of two or more disciplines, such as research o ...
media. In 2012 she curated ''The Future Archive'' at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), in Berlin, Germany. This show focused on artistic research projects of the 1970s and 1980s related to the
Center for Advanced Visual Studies The MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) has its origins in the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an arts and research center founded in 1967 by artist and teacher György Kepes ...
(CAVS), which was founded in 1967 by
György Kepes
György Kepes ɟøɾɟ ˈkɛpɛʃ(October 4, 1906 – December 29, 2001) was a Hungarian-born painter, photographer, designer, educator, and art theorist. After immigrating to the U.S. in 1937, he taught design at the New Bauhaus (later the S ...
at MIT. In 2005, Bauer curated the ''Mobile_Transborder Archive for InSite05'', in Tijuana /San Diego, which consisted of a mobile unit created to connect various institutions, entities and individuals around issues related to the San Diego-Tijuana and the California-Baja California border region. In 2004, Bauer was the Artistic Director of the 3rd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, which presented 50 contemporary artists at KW Institute for Contemporary Art and at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. The Biennale focused on 5 topics ''Migration'', ''Urban Conditions'', ''Sonic Scapes'', ''Sashions and Scenes'', and ''Other Cinemas'' Exhibited artists included: Fernando Bryce, Banu Cennetoğlu,
Florian Hecker
Florian Hecker was born in 1975 in Augsburg, Germany. He was raised in Kissing, Germany and studied Computational Linguistics and Psycholinguistics at Ludwig Maximilian Universität, Munich and Fine Arts at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, V ...
Ulrike Ottinger
Ulrike Ottinger (born 6 June 1942) is a German filmmaker and photographer.
Early life
From 1959 she was a visiting student at the Academy of Arts in Munich and worked as a painter. Her mother, Maria Weinberg, was a journalist and her father, Ul ...
, Mathias Poledna, Aura Rosenberg, Bojan Sarčević, Dierk Schmidt, Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas, and Amelie von Wulffen. She was the curator of the Nordic Pavilion (Norway, Sweden) for the 50th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2003. Curator of the exhibition ''First Story – Women Building/New Narratives for the 21st Century'' at the Palace Gallery, in 2001, for Porto European Cultural Capital and ''Architectures of Discourse'' for the Fundació Antoni Tapiès in Barcelona, Spain, in the same year.
Her recent co-curatorial projects include the exhibition ''Paradise Lost'' with Anca Rujoiu which inaugurated the Centre for Contemporary Art (CCA) in 2014. World Biennial Forum No. 1, Gwangju, South Korea with Hou Hanru in 2012 and the
Documenta
''documenta'' is an exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany.
The ''documenta'' was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau (Federal Horticultura ...
11 (2001-2002), Kassel, Germany, along with
Okwui Enwezor
Okwui Enwezor (23 October 1963 – 15 March 2019) was a Nigerian curator, art critic, writer, poet, and educator, specializing in art history. He lived in New York City and Munich. In 2014, he was ranked 24 in the ''ArtReview'' list of the 100 m ...
team. Bauer also co-curated the show ''Now Here'' at the
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art is an art museum located on the shore of the Øresund Sound in Humlebæk, north of Copenhagen, Denmark. It is the most visited art museum in Denmark, and has an extensive permanent collection of modern and cont ...
in 1996, Humlebæk, Denmark, along with
Laura Cottingham Laura Cottingham (born 1959) is an American art critic, curator and visual artist. Her most recent book is ''Angst essen Seele auf'' on Rainer Werner Fassbinder published by the British Film Institute in 2005. Her work has been exhibited in galleri ...
, Anneli Fuchs & Lars Grambye,
Iwona Blazwick
Iwona Maria Blazwick OBE (born 14 October 1955) is a British art critic and lecturer, and has been Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London since 2001. She discovered Damien Hirst and staged his first solo show at a public London art ...
, among others.
Publications
* 1992-94 ''META 1-4'' (Stuttgart)
* 2001 ''Education, Information, Entertainment. New Approaches in Higher Artistic Education'' (Vienna: Selene; Institut für Gegenwartskunst)
* 2001-02 ''case'' (Barcelona, 2001; Porto, 2002)
* 2003-06 ''Verksted # 1-6'' (Oslo)
* 2007 ''A Dynamic Equilibrium: In pursuit of public terrain'' (co-authored with Magali Arriola, Judith Barry, Teddy Cruz among others, México City)
* 2009 ''What’s left…What remains?'' (Simposio Internacional de Teoría de Arte Contemporáneo, Patronage for Contemporary Art in Mexico City)
* 2011 ''Stephen Willats: Art Society Feedback'' (with Anja Casser)
* 2012 ''Intellectual Birdhouse, Artistic Practice as Research'' (co-edited with Florian Dombois, Michael Schwab and Claudia Mareis, Walther König, Köln)
* 2013 ''World Biennale Forum No 1 – Shifting Gravity'' (co-edited with Hou Hanru,