Rochelle Steiner to be Chief Curator at Vancouver Art Gallery

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Rochelle Steiner (photo by Steve Cohn)

Rochelle Steiner has been appointed associate director and chief curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery, effective June 1. 

Steiner has expertise in modern and contemporary art, public art, architecture and urbanism as well as non-profit management and education. She has served as a senior curator and director in major museums and arts organizations, as a project manager for complex exhibitions and public art projects, and as a professor and dean at a major research university. Her work focuses on the role art, artists and museums play in cities around the world.

Kathleen Bartels, director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Steiner's experience and network will help the gallery expand its global impact. "Rochelle’s dynamic work spearheading major public art projects, as well as building collections and producing scholarship, will benefit the gallery and its visitors as we work together in finding new, innovative ways to bring art to the forefront of our community.”

Steiner says she looks forward to contributing to future exhibitions, the growth of the collection and new partnerships. “This is an exciting opportunity to work closely with director Kathleen Bartels, as well as the staff, board of trustees and artistic community as the gallery expands its impact locally, in Canada and internationally.”

Steiner has organized some 60 major art exhibitions and large scale public art projects in the United States, Europe and Asia. Most recently, she co-curated Access+Ability at New York’s Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.

Steiner has held senior positions in museums and public institutions internationally, including director of the Public Art Fund, New York, chief curator at the Serpentine Gallery, London, and associate curator of contemporary art at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Since 2010, she has been a professor of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California where she taught courses on curatorial practice, public art, and modern and contemporary art and design. She also served as dean there from 2010 to 2012. In 2011, she co-founded, and has since co-led, Emergent Cities, an interdisciplinary working and research group at the university that focuses on the future of cities from perspectives including urbanism, arts and culture, technology and placemaking.

Under Steiner’s leadership, the Public Art Fund commissioned public art projects with established and emerging international artists, including Olafur Eliasson’s The New York City Waterfalls in collaboration with the City of New York. She also curated Chris Burden, What My Dad Gave Me at the Rockefeller Center; Alexander Calder in New York at City Hall Park; Dara Friedman, Musical throughout New York; and Sarah Sze, Corner Plot at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza, Central Park. At the Public Art Fund, Steiner also initiated a series of artist performances, including The Rodney Graham Band Live featuring the Amazing Rotary Psycho-Opticon and Martin Creed, Variety Show, both at the Abrons Art Center at Henry Street Settlement. 

As chief curator at the Serpentine Gallery, Steiner curated and organized solo and group exhibitions with internationally acclaimed artists including Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Ellsworth Kelly, Takashi Murakami, Gabriel Orozco, Cindy Sherman, Monika Sosnowska, Do Ho Suh and Rirkrit Tiravanija.

At the Saint Louis Art Museum, Steiner curated the museum’s Currents program, including solo exhibitions featuring Peter Doig, Catherine Opie and Gary Simmons, and the group exhibition Wonderland, which invited artists to transform the museum’s spaces into a series of engaging installations. 

Steiner has contributed to two Asian biennales. She curated 6 Under 60 at the 2011 Shenzhen and Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture, and organized North America's participation in Beyond the Borders at the 1995 Gwangju Biennale, South Korea.

Additionally, Steiner has consulted for art schools, museums and non-profit arts organizations on new initiatives involving contemporary art, public art and architecture, including: the College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts at Florida International University; KØS–Museum for Art in Public Spaces in Denmark; the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute; and the Miami Art Museum (now Pérez Art Museum Miami). In Miami, she developed a strategic plan for the museum as it embarked on its new 150,000-square-foot Herzog and de Meuron-designed facility, working closely with the board of trustees and senior staff to advance the museum’s collection, exhibition and education programs in both the former and new facilities.

Steiner earned PhD and MA degrees in visual and cultural studies from the University of Rochester in New York. In 2009, she was one of 10 fellows selected for the Centre for Curatorial Leadership program in association with Columbia University's  business school's executive education program.

Source: Vancouver Art Gallery - April 26, 2018