FRANCESCO MANACORDA NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF ARTISSIMA

exterior/interior: Francesco Manacorda last Friday in his London Office at Rochelle School, photographed by Pablo Leon de la Barra

Francesco Manacorda Named New Artistic Director of Artissima
Wednesday, 20 January 2010

During today’s press conference, Giovanna Cattaneo Incisa, the president of Fondazione Torino Musei, together with the cultural commissioners of Regione Piemonte, Gianni Oliva, and of the City of Turin, Fiorenzo Alfieri, presented the new artistic director of the ARTISSIMA Fair, Francesco Manacorda, to the Press.

During the conference, the newly appointed director said:
“By combining public and private, Artissima is not just an art fair but also an annual festival of contemporary art. This hybrid condition is precisely what differentiates it from similar events. This is why I intend to continue the excellent work started up by Andrea Bellini, pushing forward the innovative curatorial format that complements the commercial event. This dual identity should not be seen as a source of conflict but, on the contrary, as an opportunity to create a unique new configuration of great mutual advantage to gallerists, collectors, professionals and the public at large. The national and international visibility acquired by Artissima in recent years needs to be increased and developed in order to make it a cultural event of great appeal, as a result of its experimental nature.”

Born in Turin in 1974, Francesco Manacorda is a critic and an independent curator based in London. He is Visiting Lecturer in Exhibition History and Critical Theory at the Curating Contemporary Art Department of the Royal College of Art, London.

He graduated from the University of Turin and earned an MA degree in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. He worked in London as a freelance curator for four years and was later appointed Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery where he has organized two large-scale group exhibitions – “Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art” (co-curated with Lydia Yee, 2008) and “Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009” (2009) – and several solo exhibitions with emerging artists.

His curatorial practice has also included collaborations with many art institutions amongst which the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Serpentine Gallery, Lyon Biennial, T1 – Turin Triennial, and the Slovenian and New Zealand Pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Since November 2009 he has been working as curator-at-large for the ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

He has also contributed to magazines such as Domus, Flash Art, Frieze, Metropolis M, Piktogram, Kaleidoscope, Untitled, Art Review and Mousse.

He has been living and working in London since 2001, and he will move to Turin to take up his new position.

http://www.artissima.it