Ian Alden Russell is a curator, educator and strategist and currently holds the post of Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Before joining CUHK, Ian was an Artistic Director and Chief Curator with K11, Curator of Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery, a Lecturer in the Rhode Island School of Design’s Glass Department and an Instructor with Brown University’s School of Professional Studies. Previously, Ian held the posts of Assistant Professor of Curating and Contemporary Art at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey, Fellow in Public Humanities at Brown University and NEH Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. Ian has also been a visiting critic at the University of Texas, Austin, Rhode Island School of Design and the School of Visual Arts New York.

 

With a professional background as a contemporary art curator and a cultural brand strategist, Ian has broad international experience leading projects and working with major arts and cultural organizations in the US, Europe and China – specializing in arts programming, brand strategy, cultural strategy, semiotics, visual identity and organizational development. Ian also has ten years’ experience in the performing arts, touring and performing internationally with the award-winning vocal group Anúna.

 

Recent curatorial projects include: Wafaa Bilal’s Conflict Exchange (CX) featuring works by Drew Cameron (Combat Paper) and Alicia Dietz for the inaugural National Veterans Art Museum Triennial, Project Development Consultant for Tania Bruguera’s 10,148,451 for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, On Protest, Art and Activism featuring Paul Chan with Badlands Unlimited, Hermine Freed, Ja’Tovia Gary, Theaster Gates, Guerrilla Girls, Josephine Meckseper, Howardena Pindell, Suzanne Lacy, Martha Rosler and Dread Scott as part of the For Freedoms 50 State Initiative, Melvin Edwards’s Festivals, Funerals, and New Life featuring works by Jayne Cortez, Pierre Huyghe’s Untitled (Human Mask), Artpace San Antonio’s 2015 International-Artist-in-Residence program, the Brown University 250th Anniversary Alumni Exhibitions featuring Taryn Simon, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Kerry Tribe, Sarah Morris, Rob Reynolds and Dawn Clements and the premiers of Mark Dion’s Against the Current, Fatma Bucak’s And men turned their faces from there, Vincent Valdez’s The Strangest Fruit and Wafaa Bilal’s The Ashes Series. 

 

Recent research and publication projects include: contributions to The Sustainability Plan for Ormston House in Limerick, Ireland, contributions to the Safina Radio Project at the 56th Venice Biennale, researcher for "Socially Engaged Art Practices and Education in Contemporary Discourse" at UNIDEE, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, An Innocent City in Istanbul, Turkey responding to Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence and Sean Lynch’s Clanbrassil Street ‘Zines and Ursula Rani Sarma’s Home Project both in Dublin, Ireland.

 

Ian’s teaching practice ranges from critical, theoretical and methodological courses to practice-based, research and design skills workshops. Topics covered include contemporary art, creative entrepreneurship, cultural production, curatorial practice, design, heritage studies, museum studies, public speaking and material culture studies. 

 

Ian’s writings have been published by Cambridge University Press, Cittadellarte, deCordova Museum & Sculpture Park, Lars Muller Publishers, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Oxford University Press, Springer-Kluwer and Yapı Kredi Publishers.

 

Ian has also been invited to give lectures at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki, Brown University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Columbia University, Contemporary Istanbul, Fudan University in Shanghai, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Harvard University, New York University, Rhode Island School of Design, Stanford University, University of Cambridge, University of Shanghai, University of Texas, Austin and Williams College.

 

Born in Richmond, Virginia and educated in Ireland, Ian received a Ph.D. in History from Trinity College Dublin and has held major fellowships at Brown University, University of Notre Dame and University College Dublin.

 

More information and portfolios available here: http://ianaldenrussell.com

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

curating, cultural production, branding, heritage studies, political ecology and social practice

 

BOOKS

Forthcoming Do This Instead: Curating as Practice. Co-author with Denise Markonish, Senior Curator and Managing Director of Exhibitions, MASS MoCA.

 

Forthcoming Art/Archaeology. Routledge, London. Co-editor with Michael Shanks, Stanford University

 

2014 An Innocent City: Modest Musings on Everyday Istanbul. Yapı Kredi, Istanbul. Editor

 

2014 Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology. Spriner, New York. Section Editor, Heritage

 

2013 Art and Archaeology. Springer, New York. Co-editor with Andrew Cochrane, Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts

 

2010 Unquiet Pasts. Ashgate, Aldershot. Co-editor with Stephanie Koerner, University of Manchester

 

2006 Images, Representations, and Heritage. Springer-Kluwer, New York. Editor

 

SELECTED ARTICLES & ESSAYS

 

2019 "On Fatigue and Recovery" in A. Duncan (ed.) The Sustainability Plan, Ormston House, Limerick.

 

2018 "Dream Baby Dream" in Vincent Valdez: Dream Baby Dream. David Shelton Gallery, Houston, Texas. 

 

2017 "Artist-founded education projects: A provisional pragmatology" in S. Franceschini (ed.) Politics of Affinities: Experimentations in Art, Education and Politics, Cittadellarte Fondazione-Pistoletto, Biella.

 

2017 "Wafaa Bilal: The Ashes Series" in Tribe: Photography & New Media from the Arab World, vol. 04, 80 – 88.

 

2017 "Cultural Heritage and Political Ecology" in L. McAtackney & K. Ryzewski (eds.) Contemporary archaeology and the city: Creativity, ruination and political action, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

 

2016 "The Ashes Series" in Wafaa Bilal: 168:01. Windsor Gallery of Art, Windsor.

 

2015 "Nothing is in its right place" in Fatma Bucak: Nothing is in its right place. Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea, Torino. 

 

2014 "The Educational Turn: A tentative history and taxonomy of artist-founded education projects" in Socially Engaged Art Practices and Education in Contemporary Discourse. UNIDEE, Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto, Biella.

 

2014 Brown University 250th Anniversary Alumni Exhibitions Catalog. David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence. Essays for Paul Ramirez Jonas and Rob Reynolds.

 

2013 "The Art of the Past: Before and After Archaeology" in D. Roelstraete (ed.), The Way of the Shovel: On the Archaeological Imaginary in Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, University Chicago Press, Chicago.

 

2013 deCordova Biennial Catalog. deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln. Essays for John C. Gonzalez, Lynne Harlow, and  J. R. Uretsky.

 

2013 Vincent Valdez: The Strangest Fruit. David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence.

 

2012 "Towards an ethics of oblivion and forgetting" in Heritage & Society 5(2), 249 – 272.

 

2012 The Oxford Companion to Archaeology, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Entries for "Archaeological Influences in Art" and "Cultural Creativity."

 

2012 "Introducing the Art of Jin Shan 靳山" in Jin Shan 靳山 | My dad is Li Gang! 我爸 是李刚!, David Winton Bell Gallery, Providence. 

 

2011 "Art and archaeology: A modern allegory," Archaeological Dialogues 18 (2), 176 – 180.

 

2009 "Can you see me now?: Breaking the fourth wall of the analog:digital divide" in V. O. Jorge & J. Thomas (eds.) Archaeology and the politics of vision in a post-modern context. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

 

2008 "Art, archaeology & the contemporary," Museum Ireland, vol. 18 (2008), 85 – 105.

 

2007 "Visualizing archaeologies: A manifesto," Cambridge Archaeological Journal 17(1), 3 – 19.

 

2006 "Freud and Volkan: Psychoanalysis, Group Identities and Archaeology," Antiquity, vol. 80, no. 307, 185 – 95.