1999 Carnegie International Names Advisory Committee

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, May 15, 1998 . . . The 1999 Carnegie International Advisory Committee has been selected and was announced today by Richard Armstrong, The Henry J. Heinz II Director of Carnegie Museum of Art. Named as committee members are Okwui Enwezor, poet, critic, curator, and publisher and founding editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art; Susanne Ghez, Executive Director of The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; and Lars Nittve, Director of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark.

"These three are among the most engaged and widely respected members of the international art community," Armstrong said.

"Their contributions to the 1999 Carnegie International will be invaluable. They will advise the curator on the contents of the show, and constitute the jury for the Carnegie International Prize."

"As outstanding leaders in the contemporary art world, each committee member will greatly enhance the development of the 1999 Carnegie International," said Madeleine Grynsztejn, the exhibition’s curator.

Grynsztejn continued, "Okwui Enwezor brings extensive experience in the international exhibition format. Susanne Ghez has recognized and exhibited the work of important emerging talent for over 20 years. And Lars Nittve’s projects consistently hone in on relevant and topical subjects in art."

Enwezor was recently appointed Adjunct Curator of Contemporary Art at The Art

Institute of Chicago. His writing has appeared in numerous art magazines as well as exhibition catalogues including Future, Present, Past (47th Venice Biennale), and Transforming the Crown: African, Asian & Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966-1996. Enwezor was the artistic director of the 1997 Johannesburg Biennial and curator of In Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present (Guggenheim Museum, New York) and Global Conceptualism/Local Contexts (Queens Museum of Art, New York). He served as a juror for the Guggenheim Museum’s 1998 Hugo Boss Prize.

During Ghez’s 25-year tenure at the University of Chicago, she has organized over a hundred exhibitions of established and emerging contemporary artists. She has also served as a curator of exhibitions for Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Artists Space, New York. Since 1979, she has served in consulting and advisory positions for numerous institutions, including the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio; Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Awards; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York; ARCO Spanish International Art Fair, Madrid; the Cultural Department of the French Government; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities; and the Illinois Arts Council.

Nittve was recently appointed Director of the Tate Gallery of Modern Art at Bankside and will take this post in fall 1998. His previous positions, in addition to his current position at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, have included Senior Curator and Acting Director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and Founding Director of the Rooseum in Malmö, Sweden. He has served as correspondent for Artforum and written and edited numerous publications about contemporary art, including Implosion — A Postmodern Perspective and Passageworks. Recent curatorial projects include Sunshine and Noir — Art in L.A. 1960-1997 and NowHere. Nittve has served on over 20 boards and juries over the past ten years, including the Venice Biennale; the Turner Prize, Tate Gallery, London; Site Santa Fe, New Mexico; the DAAD, Berlin; and the Philip Morris Art Award, Japan.

Milton Fine, Chairman of the Board of Carnegie Museum of Art said, "We are extremely grateful to the outstanding people who have agreed to serve on the Advisory Committee. They will provide valuable counsel in preparation for the 1999 Carnegie International, and their contributions will further enhance the International’s reputation as one of the most exciting visual arts events in the world."

The Carnegie International began in 1896 as an annual survey of paintings by American and European artists and has evolved into a world-renowned exhibition focusing on the current peaks of visual art expression. A beneficiary of an endowment established by the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in 1980, it is the longest running survey of contemporary art in North America, and, with the Venice Biennale, the senior such exhibition.

The 53^rd version of the show will be on view November 6, 1999 — March 26, 2000 in 60,000 square feet of exhibition space at Carnegie Museum of Art. The 1999 Carnegie International is supported by Mellon Bank.

The premier museum in the region, Carnegie Museum of Art boasts a distinguished collection of American art from the mid-nineteenth-century to the present, French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, and late twentieth-century works, including film and video in its collection. Other collections of note include European and American decorative arts from the late seventeenth-century to the present. The Heinz Architectural Center, opened in 1993, is dedicated to the collection, study, and exhibition of architectural drawings and models.

Carnegie Museum of Art is located at 4400 Forbes Avenue in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh. Ample parking is available in the six-level garage directly behind the building at the corner of Forbes Avenue and South Craig Street. For more information about exhibitions, programs, and admission, call 412/622-3131 or visit our Web site at www.cmoa.org.