Artists Space Names Jay Sanders Executive Director and Chief Curator

From Artforum:

"The board of directors of Artists Space announced today that Jay Sanders, currently the Engell Speyer Family Curator and curator of performance at the Whitney Museum of American Art, has been appointed as the organization’s new executive director and chief curator. He will assume his new post in April.

David Joselit and Eleanor Cayre, cochairs of the Artists Space executive search committee, said, “Jay Sanders has the vision, energy, and sense of adventure that Artists Space demands, combined with great depth of critical insight and a wide-ranging knowledge of contemporary art. We could not have hoped to recruit a more brilliant executive director to carry forward this essential institution.”

During his tenure at the Whitney Museum, Sanders curated a range of exhibitions including shows dedicated to artists such as Laura Poitras and Sarah Michelson as well as an exhibition devoted to the origins of performance art in New York. He also organized major performance retrospectives of the vanguard composer Conlon Nancarrow, seminal downtown performance art duo DANCENOISE, Fluxus pioneer Takehisa Kosugi, and others. In 2012, Sanders cocurated the Whitney Biennial with Elisabeth Sussman. His exhibition of the works of Alexander Calder, “Calder: Hypermobility,” will open at the Whitney in June 2017.

“I could not be more honored and excited to be joining Artists Space at this important moment,” Sanders said. “As an institution that has played a vital and reflexive role in advancing the ongoing concerns of artists, I hold its mission and values in the highest regard. Artists Space is a critical site of experimentation, dialogue, and activity and has, time and time again, shown its potential to reinvent itself in relation to the present.”

Artists Space also announced plans to move to a new building after years at 38 Greene Street. More details about its new location will be revealed in the coming months."