Nancy Spector

Nancy Spector is an American museum curator who is the chief curator at the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York City, New York.^[1] Previously she was deputy director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

Life and career

Spector graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy from Sarah Lawrence College in 1981. She received an M.A. from Williams College in 1984 and a Master of Philosophy degree in Art History from City University Graduate Center in 1997^[2] She has been a Guggenheim curator since 1989.^[3] At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, she has organized exhibitions and retrospectives on or of conceptual photography, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle, Richard Prince, Louise Bourgeois, Marina Abramovic, Maurizio Cattelan and Tino Sehgal. She also organized the group exhibitions Moving Pictures (2003), Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated) (2004), and theanyspacewhatever (2008).^[4] Under the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Spector initiated special commissions by Andreas Slominski, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Lawrence Weiner.^[5]

Spector was adjunct curator of the 1997 Venice Biennale and a co-curator of the first Berlin Biennale in 1998. In 2007 she was the U.S. Commissioner for the Venice Biennale, where she presented an exhibition of work by Felix Gonzalez-Torres.^[6] She has written catalogue essays for exhibitions on Maurizio Cattelan, Luc Tuymans, Douglas Gordon, Tino Sehgal and Anna Gaskell among others.^[7]

Spector is a recipient of the Peter Norton Family Foundation Curators Award^[5] and an International Art Critics Association Award.^[8] In 2014, she was named one of the top 25 most important women in the art world by Artnet.^[9] Additionally, Forbes named Spector on the “40 Women To Watch Over 40” list.^[10]

Select bibliography

• Spector, Nancy, and Félix González-Torres. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1995.
• Barney, Matthew, Nancy Spector, and Neville Wakefield. Matthew Barney: The Cremaster Cycle. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2002.
• Spector, Nancy, and Richard Prince. Richard Prince. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2007.
• ʻAnattā, . Phalang Thang 6 [hok]. Krungthēp: Khletthai, 1983.
• Hanhardt, John G, Nancy Spector, Lisa Dennison, and Joan Young. Moving Pictures: Contemporary Photography and Video from the Guggenheim Museum Collections. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2003.
• Spector, Nancy, Maurizio Cattelan, Francesco Bonami, and Barbara Vanderlinden. Maurizio Cattelan. London: Phaidon, 2000.
• Spector, Nancy, Maurizio Cattelan, and Nancy Spector. Maurizio Cattelan: All. New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2011.
• Spector, Nancy. Theanyspacewhatever. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008.
• Dennison, Lisa, and Nancy Spector. Singular Forms (sometimes Repeated): Art from 1951 to the Present. [exhibition] Guggenheim Museum. New York: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2004.
• González-Torres, Félix, and Nancy Spector. Felix Gonzalez-Torres: America. United States Pavilion, 52nd Venice Biennale, 2007. New York, NY: Guggenheim Museum Publications, 2007.

References

External links

• Profile of Spector at the Guggenheim Museum website
• Complete list of Spector's works
• Bollen, Christopher. "The Curator", The New York Times, December 3, 2006