2015.09.30 Wed, by
THE AGNES GUND CURATORIAL AWARD

The Agnes Gund Curatorial Award honors a curator who has made an outstanding contribution to the presentation and discourse of contemporary art. The “Aggie” Award was named after ICI Trustee Emerita Agnes Gund in recognition of her long-standing dedication to ICI, to contemporary art, and to the curatorial field. Past recipients of the Agnes Gund Curatorial Award include Germano Celant, Lynne Cooke, Okwui Enwezor, Roselee Goldberg, Alanna Heiss, Matthew Higgs, and Robert Storr. The 2015 Agnes Gund Curatorial Award will be presented to Beatrix Ruf, curator and Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

Throughout her career, Ruf has shown unwavering support of artists, helping define many careers. She has followed her trust in the experimental, and consistently nurtured emerging art practice, giving several young artists their first museum exhibitions and commissioning them for new art installations. Through key survey exhibitions, she has also inscribed more established artists such as Sturtevant, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Laura Owens, Yang Fudong and Ian Wallace in an art historical arc.

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Like many curators in recent years, Ruf has also worked towards building strong infrastructures for contemporary art practice. From 2001 to 2014, she ran the Kunsthalle Zürich, where she initiated an extensive building expansion while also developing a distinguished exhibitions program. 

Ruf believes in the importance of fostering art discourse, and as such she served as a Board Member of JRP|Ringier, one of the world’s leading contemporary art publishing houses, for many years. Committed to institutional cooperation across borders, Ruf often worked within a network of prominent European institutions including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate Liverpool, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. Since 2014, she has been the Director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.

The 2015 Leo Award and the 2015 Agnes Gund Curatorial Award will be presented at ICI’s 40th Anniversary Benefit & Auction in New York City on November 18.