COURTESY UNC
Lauren Cornell, a longtime curatorial ambassador for the New Museum in New York in different roles spanning digital art and technology initiatives, has been named director of the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and chief curator of the Hessel Museum of Art at the school in upstate New York. Her new purview at CCS Bard includes curriculum and faculty development, directing research initiatives, and overseeing artist- and curator-in-residence programs. At the museum, her appointment marks the first time the Hessel will have a chief curator for programs and shows in its idyllic setting in Annandale-on-Hudson in the Hudson River Valley.
At the New Museum, Cornell worked most recently as curator and associate director of technology initiatives. From 2005 to 2012, she served as executive director of the museum’s net-art enterprise Rhizome. In 2015, she co-curated (with the artist Ryan Trecartin) the New Museum triennial, titled “Surround Audience,” and she also co-edited Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the Twenty-First Century, a book published by the New Museum and MIT Press.
In a statement, Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS Bard, said, “Our recent expansion broadened our capacity for archival research and contemporary art scholarship, creating greater opportunities for the CCS students, the undergraduate programs at Bard and visitors to the museum.”
In a note sent to friends and colleagues, Cornell said, “I’m excited though, of course, leaving the New Museum is bittersweet.” She also noted she would be programming more actively in her new role.