The former MoMA PS1 chief curator joins the institution as it prepares to open its Shanghai outpost
Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art has appointed New-York based Peter Eleey, former MoMA PS1 chief curator, as it new curator-at-large. He will advise on the development of the museum’s exhibitions and programmes across its three venues: the Beijing institution, its new outpost opening next month in Shanghai, and UCCA Dune, which opened in Beidaihe, Hebei province in 2018. Eleey will also be responsible for organising exhibitions at UCCA and work to expand the museum’s programme and partnerships from his base in New York.
Commenting on this appointment, UCCA director Philip Tinari said: ‘His role in shaping MoMA PS1’s leading programme and expanding its capacity over the past decade makes him an ideal partner for UCCA during this next phase of our development. His remarkable curatorial vision, and especially his sensitivity to artists and audiences, will be a great asset to UCCA as we work to build a global museum for contemporary China.’
Eleey has worked with a number of important Chinese artists over the course of his career, including Cai Guo-Qiang, Song Dong, Zhang Huan and Zheng Guogu. His exhibition .com/.cn (2017–18, cocurated with Klaus Biesenbach), presented at K11 Art Foundation in Hong Kong and Shanghai, compared artistic responses to the different technological ecosystems in China and the West. During his time at MoMA PS1, Eleey curated more than 40 exhibitions including September 11 (2011), organised on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the last edition of Greater New York (2015), for which he led the curatorial team of Douglas Crimp, Thomas J. Lax, and Mia Locks, and Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2011, organised in collaboration with Ruba Katrib. Before joining MoMA PS1, Eleey was visual arts curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and a curator at Creative Time in New York.
