In the run-up to his forthcoming edition of the Carnegie International, one of the oldest and most respected biennial-style shows in the U.S., curator Sohrab Mohebbi is set to return to New York’s SculptureCenter, where he will take over as director. Kyle Dancewicz, currently the interim director for the art space in Long Island City, Queens, will become deputy director.
Mohebbi, who will assume his new post at SculptureCenter in March, is currently the space’s curator-at-large. Before taking that position in 2020, he was an in-house curator at SculptureCenter, which has gained a reputation in New York for the offbeat, often conceptually rigorous shows it stages by under-recognized and emerging artists. His edition of the Carnegie International is expected to open in September.
At SculptureCenter, Mohebbi has organized a string of critically acclaimed shows, including a 2020 Tishan Hsu survey that also appeared at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and a 2021 Rindon Johnson exhibition that traveled to London’s Chisenhale Gallery.
In a statement, Mohebbi said, “In the past few years, we have all been trying to reassess what we do, how we do it, and why we do it. At SculptureCenter we have a chance to experiment with and learn from these new institutional discourses and possibilities to better serve our constituents and our living environment. As many aspects of human life, culture, and politics evaporate into the cloud, SculptureCenter’s mission enables us to see how art reframes our relationship with matter, emergent objects, and forms.”
Mohebbi replaces Christian Rattemeyer, who left SculptureCenter in 2020 after less than a year in the job. Artnet News’s “Wet Paint” column reported that Rattemeyer had had “battles with the board” of an unspecified nature prior to his departure.