The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (CCS Bard) has announced today that art historian and curator Manuel Borja-Villel has been awarded the 2024 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. The award comes with a $25,000 prize. With him, CCS Bard alumnus Carla Acevedo-Yates was granted a newly created award, the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award, which comes with a $10,000 prize. Both awards will be given at CCS Bard’s spring gala in New York City on 18 April 2024.
Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS Bard said that ‘Manuel Borja-Villel embodies the critical role of curators today in challenging accepted modes of practice to facilitate meaningful and responsive discourse on visual culture, past and present.’ He added, ‘As we celebrate Manuel’s achievements following his departure as the transformational director of Museo Reina Sofia, we also recognize the outstanding contributions of Carla Acevedo-Yates, whose curatorial career has brought visibility to overlooked artists across the Americas.’
‘Needless to say, I am very honored and grateful,’ said Borja-Villel about the award. ‘I am honored because I have collaborated on differentoccasions with many of the past awardees and I have always respected and admired their work. To be part of this group of people is a joy. I am grateful because the award is in recognition of a trajectory. Mine has developed in museums, that is, my work has always been done together with others. My award is also theirs.’ Last week, Borja-Villel and another Audrey Irmas Award recipient, Vasif Kortun (2006), published an open letter regarding Documenta 16, describing how both the quinquennial is now ‘a symptom of a plagued Europe’. The two curators say they were individually invited to submit a proposal to Documenta 16, and decided to do a joint proposal which was in turn discussed by the finding committee, only to then learn from Documenta that their application had been ‘terminated’ due to a formality. The two curators have published the letter as they feel the crisis at Documenta is a political one, not an artistic one.
‘I’m delighted to recognize the exceptional achievements of CCS Bard graduates with the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award, and to celebrate the outstanding accomplishments by Carla Acevedo-Yates as its initial recipient,’ said CCS board member Scott Lorinsky. ‘Carla is an innovative leader in the curatorial field with an impeccable commitment to centering artistic practices by artists from the Global South, with a focus on Caribbean, Latin American and Latinx artists.’ Acevedo-Yates said, ‘I am honored to be recognized by my peers as the inaugural recipient of the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Awardat CCS Bard, an institution that has been deeply influential in how I approach curatorial practice and working with artists. CCS was such a meaningful experience in so many ways. Apart from understanding exhibition-making as an intellectually driven spatial practice, I also gained a generous community of colleagues that have accompanied me through the years.’
The Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence was launched in 1998 and is given annually to recognise vision in the curatorial field. The winner is selected by a panel of curators, museum directors, and artists. Past winners include Harald Szeemann (1998), Okwui Enwezor (2009), Lucy Lippard (2010) and Thelma Golden (2016). The Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award was launched this year to recognise an alumnus of CCS Bard who has shown sustained innovation and engagement in exhibition-making, public education, research and a commitment to the field.
