Iwona Blazwick
Encyclopedia
Iwona Blazwick OBE
(b. 1955) is director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London
.
, South East
London. (Blazwick is an anglicized form of her original surname Blaszczyk, which is of Polish
origin).
Blazwick studied English and Fine Art at Exeter
University before becoming an assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
, under the tutelage of Sandy Nairne
, who is now director of the National Portrait Gallery. Her first exhibition was, Objects and Sculpture (1981), which included work by artists Bill Woodrow
, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor
and Antony Gormley
.
From 1984, to 1986, Blazwick was Director of AIR Gallery, London.
From 1986 to 1993, she was Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
, London, where she curated exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.
From 1993 to 1997, Blazwick worked as an independent curator for museums and major public arts projects in Europe and Japan, devising surveys of contemporary artists and commissioning new works of art. During this period she was also Commissioning Editor for Contemporary Art at Phaidon Press
where she created the ongoing book series, Contemporary Artists Monographs and Themes and Movements.
From 1997-2001, she was head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Modern
, where she was responsible for co-curating the installation of the collection and formulating the exhibitions programme.
One of her first responsibilities at the Whitechapel Gallery was to sign the expansion programme contract.
Blazwick is Chair of the Cultural Strategy Group
at London's City Hall, appointed by Mayor Boris Johnson
.
She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours
.
, (Tate Modern) Art and Language, Willie Doherty
, Peter Halley
, Damien Hirst
, Jenny Holzer
, Ilya Kabakov
, Barbara Kruger
, Meret Oppenheim
, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
, Gerhard Richter
, Rosemarie Trockel
and Lawrence Weiner
, (ICA). Blazwick was visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art
and teaches occasionally at Goldsmith's School of Art, Central St. Martins, Middlesex University
, the Slade School and Sotheby's MA Course. She has taught abroad at academies in Hamburg, Malmö
and Vienna.
, Katharina Fritsch
, Ilya Kabakov
, Cornelia Parker
, Lawrence Weiner and Rachel Whiteread
, among others; and anthologies such as Fresh Cream in 2001. She was editor of the Tate Modern Handbook and Century City. She also writes art criticism for numerous periodicals. She contributes occasional reviews and commentaries for BBC
and Channel Four television and BBC radio.
(1993), the Jerwood Painting Prize (1997), and the 2002 Wexner Prize (as a member of Ohio's Wexner Center's International Arts Advisory Council).
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(b. 1955) is director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Life and career
Iwona Blazwick was brought up by her architect parents in BlackheathBlackheath, London
Blackheath is a district of South London, England. It is named from the large open public grassland which separates it from Greenwich to the north and Lewisham to the west...
, South East
South East (London sub region)
The South East is a sub-region of the London Plan corresponding to the London Boroughs of Bexley, Bromley, Greenwich, Lewisham and Southwark. The sub region was established in 2008. The south east has a population of 1,300,000 and is the location of 500,000 jobs...
London. (Blazwick is an anglicized form of her original surname Blaszczyk, which is of Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
origin).
Blazwick studied English and Fine Art at Exeter
Exeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
University before becoming an assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
, under the tutelage of Sandy Nairne
Sandy Nairne
Alexander Robert "Sandy" Nairne CBE is a British museum director and writer. Since 2002, he has been the director of the National Portrait Gallery.-Life and career:...
, who is now director of the National Portrait Gallery. Her first exhibition was, Objects and Sculpture (1981), which included work by artists Bill Woodrow
Bill Woodrow
Bill Woodrow is a British sculptor.Woodrow was one of a number of British sculptors to emerge in the late 1970s, the others including Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg....
, Richard Deacon, Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor CBE RA is a British sculptor of Indian birth. Born in Mumbai , Kapoor has lived and worked in London since the early 1970s when he moved to study art, first at the Hornsey College of Art and later at the Chelsea School of Art and Design.He represented Britain in the XLIV Venice...
and Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley
Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...
.
From 1984, to 1986, Blazwick was Director of AIR Gallery, London.
From 1986 to 1993, she was Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
, London, where she curated exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.
From 1993 to 1997, Blazwick worked as an independent curator for museums and major public arts projects in Europe and Japan, devising surveys of contemporary artists and commissioning new works of art. During this period she was also Commissioning Editor for Contemporary Art at Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press
Phaidon Press is a British publisher of books on the visual arts, including art, architecture, photography, and design worldwide.As of 2009, Phaidon's headquarters are in London, UK, though they were in Oxford for many years, with offices in New York City, Paris, Berlin, Milan, and Tokyo...
where she created the ongoing book series, Contemporary Artists Monographs and Themes and Movements.
From 1997-2001, she was head of Exhibitions and Displays at Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
, where she was responsible for co-curating the installation of the collection and formulating the exhibitions programme.
One of her first responsibilities at the Whitechapel Gallery was to sign the expansion programme contract.
Blazwick is Chair of the Cultural Strategy Group
Cultural Strategy Group
The Cultural Strategy Group is an official body of City Hall London and the Greater London Authority, whose members are appointed by the Mayor of London to develop strategic policy in the capital city in regard to culture, media, sport, arts, heritage and tourism.The Cultural Strategy Group has...
at London's City Hall, appointed by Mayor Boris Johnson
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British journalist and Conservative Party politician, who has been the elected Mayor of London since 2008...
.
She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours
New Year Honours 2008
The New Year Honours 2008 for the Commonwealth Realms were announced on 29 December 2007, to celebrate the year passed and mark the beginning of 2008....
.
Curator/teacher
She has curated monographic shows of Katharina FritschKatharina Fritsch
Katharina Fritsch is a contemporary sculptor. She currently lives and works in Düsseldorf.-Life:...
, (Tate Modern) Art and Language, Willie Doherty
Willie Doherty
Willie Doherty is an artist, who has mainly worked in photography and video. He has twice been a Turner Prize nominee.-Life and work:...
, Peter Halley
Peter Halley
-Early Life and Career:Halley first came to prominence as a result of the geometric paintings rendered in intense day-glo colours that he produced in the early 1980s. His practice as an artist is usually associated with minimalism, neo-geo, and neo-conceptualism...
, Damien Hirst
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...
, Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer
Jenny Holzer is an American conceptual artist. Holzer lives and works in Hoosick Falls, New York.-Education:...
, Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
, Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger
Barbara Kruger is an American conceptual artist. Much of her work consists of black-and-white photographs overlaid with declarative captions—in white-on-red Futura Bold Oblique or Helvetica Ultra Condensed...
, Meret Oppenheim
Méret Oppenheim
-External links:**** http://www.artchive.com/artchive/M/man_ray.html...
, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri
Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri was an Australian painter, considered to be one of the most collected and renowned Australian Aboriginal artists...
, Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter
Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has simultaneously produced abstract and photorealistic painted works, as well as photographs and glass pieces, thus undermining the concept of the artist’s obligation to maintain a single cohesive style.- Biography :Gerhard Richter was born in...
, Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel
Rosemarie Trockel is a German Artist, and an important figure in the international contemporary art movement.- Life :...
and Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner was a central figure in the formation of conceptual art in the 1960s His work often takes the form of typographic texts.- Life and career :...
, (ICA). Blazwick was visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
and teaches occasionally at Goldsmith's School of Art, Central St. Martins, Middlesex University
Middlesex University
Middlesex University is a university in north London, England. It is located in the historic county boundaries of Middlesex from which it takes its name. It is one of the post-1992 universities and is a member of Million+ working group...
, the Slade School and Sotheby's MA Course. She has taught abroad at academies in Hamburg, Malmö
Malmö
Malmö , in the southernmost province of Scania, is the third most populous city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg.Malmö is the seat of Malmö Municipality and the capital of Skåne County...
and Vienna.
Writing
Her writings include contributions to monographs on Hannah CollinsHannah Collins
Hannah Collins is a contemporary artist and filmmaker.Hannah Collins makes work on the collective experiences of memory, history and the everyday in the modern World...
, Katharina Fritsch
Katharina Fritsch
Katharina Fritsch is a contemporary sculptor. She currently lives and works in Düsseldorf.-Life:...
, Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov
Ilya Kabakov, Russian Илья́ Ио́сифович Кабако́в , is a Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish descent, born in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. He worked for thirty years in Moscow, from the 1950s until the late 1980s. He now lives and works on Long Island...
, Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Ann Parker OBE, RA is an English sculptor and installation artist. -Life and career:Parker studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design and Wolverhampton Polytechnic...
, Lawrence Weiner and Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread, CBE is an English artist, best known for her sculptures, which typically take the form of casts. She won the annual Turner Prize in 1993—the first woman to win the prize....
, among others; and anthologies such as Fresh Cream in 2001. She was editor of the Tate Modern Handbook and Century City. She also writes art criticism for numerous periodicals. She contributes occasional reviews and commentaries for BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and Channel Four television and BBC radio.
Juries
Blazwick has sat on certain art prize juries, including the Turner PrizeTurner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
(1993), the Jerwood Painting Prize (1997), and the 2002 Wexner Prize (as a member of Ohio's Wexner Center's International Arts Advisory Council).