As Independent Curators International (ICI) enters its 40th year, we’re delighted to highlight many of the important collaborators, exhibitions, publications, and public programs that have defined our mission. We celebrate ICI’s past with a keen eye on the future, and look forward to continuing our pioneering work in the curatorial field.

As they travel to art spaces around the globe, ICI exhibitions are adapted by the hosting venues and curators to generate new content, and new experiences with local audiences in mind. An example of this is the number of publications that have been produced over the years by the art spaces that present an ICI exhibition. Each publication expands the reach of the exhibition, and reflects new ideas, responses, and translations prompted by the show. While ICI has produced catalogues in various languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese, art spaces around the world presenting ICI exhibitions have also produced publications to accompany and expand the curatorial projects such as FAX, do it, Living as Form (the Nomadic Version), Video Art U.S.A., Power of the Word, and others.
Curator’s Perspective: Rosina Cazali at the New Museum, New York. March 17, 2012. Since 2009, ICI’s public programs and research initiatives have raised public awareness of the curatorial role and encouraged meaningful exchange in the field. Many programs have overlapped in their scope, allowing for sustained attention to be paid to specific areas of research from various perspectives. For example, in 2012 Rosina Cazali presented on her practice and the Guatemalan art scene, as part of the Curator’s Perspective talk series in New York. Her presentation introduced many to the art practice and curatorial developments in her country, and led ICI to connect with one of the most active art spaces there: Proyectos Ultravioleta. TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica. Image credit: Pablo León de la Barra. Cazali’s talk also served as a basis from which to understand further research into the Guatemalan art scene, including that of Pablo León de la Barra, who in 2013-14 was the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for Latin America. Before conducting research into the region for the Guggenheim, De la Barra spent time in Central America as the first recipient of The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean (CPPC) Travel Award. He reported on his research and the impact of the thriving Guatemalan scene for a public talk at the ICI Curatorial Hub in 2014. Image from 2013 CPPC Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean recipient Remco De Blaiij’s trip to Guatemala.
From Artists’ Books U.S.A. catalogue, 1975. Just three years after it was established, ICI produced Artists’ Books U.S.A., a unique survey exhibition of artists’ publications, co-curated by Peter Frank and Martha Wilson. This was the first time that ICI and Wilson worked together, and the project focused on a topic close the founder of Franklin Furnace: artists’ books. The show includes well over a hundred examples of book art, and was accompanied by a catalogue made up of library cards for each publication, no matter how ephemeral. Martha Wilson, Martha Wilson as Barbara Bush, March 11, 1991. Courtesy of the artist. Using this first collaboration as the starting point for a panel discussion organized by the NY Art Book Fair in 2010, ICI Director Renaud Proch invited Wilson to speak about the evolving relevance of artists’ publications since that time. In a second collaboration with the artist, ICI has presented, since 2009, an evolving retrospective of the artists – curated by Peter Dykhuis, and transformed with each presentation by Wilson. At the same time, ICI produced Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces, a collection of primary research materials consisting of rare archival documents and excerpts of landmark publications that influenced Wilson and her approach to activism and art.
Participants of the Curatorial Intensive in Addis Ababa at Zoma Contemporary Art Center. May 13–19, 2014. The Curatorial Intensive in Addis Ababa, in collaboration with Zoma Contemporary Art Center (ZCAC), marked ICI’s second Curatorial Intensive in Africa. This one-week professional development program brought together a group of eleven curators to participate in seminars, site visits to local art spaces, studio visits with artists, and individual meetings with faculty. Participants of the Curatorial Intensive in Addis Ababa. May 13–19, 2014. Over the course of the program, participants engaged in discussions with their fellow curators, and received feedback from the faculty advisors, in order to critically develop an exhibition or curatorial idea. The Curatorial Intensive forged strong connections among these international colleagues, and initiated a dialogue for future collaborations and projects.
Cover of Team Spirit, Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, 1990. ICI was founded in 1975 by two art world pioneers, Susan Sollins and Nina Castelli Sundell, who together defined the vision behind one of the first organizations in the world to be dedicated to the work of curators. Their work together shaped their understanding of how an international network of curators, artists, and art spaces could emerge through collaboration. In 1990, they co-curated the ICI exhibition Team Spirit, which reflected on their own history of working together and focused on “the growing phenomenon of collaborative art.” At the cusp of a new era of collaborative practice ushered in by Colab, the Guerrilla Girls, Gran Fury, and others, the exhibition drew a genealogy of international collaborations as a mode of production going back to the mid-1960’s, including, Equipo Cronica, General Idea, Gilbert & George, and Komar & Melamid, creating a foundation of and imperative towards collaboration that continues to this day.

January 1, 2015- - December 31, 2015 @ Celebrating 40 Years of ICI