[spectre] Fwd: new Chief Curator of LABoral, Benjamin Weil

[Andreas Broeckmann]

Logotipo Laboral


E - Bulletin



10 de junio de 2009


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Benjamin Weil, new Chief Curator of LABoral 
Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial



The Board of Patrons of La Fundación La Laboral. 
Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial de Gijón has 
named Benjamin Weil as Chief Curator. Out of the 
one hundred and twenty-four candidates, Benjamin 
Weil was the most highly considered throughout 
the selection process due to his widely 
acknowledged experience in the interdisciplinary 
field of the visual arts, technology, science and 
industrial creation.
The Selection Panel of Judges - comprised by the 
Executive Board of Patrons of the Fundación and 
Gerfried Stocker (Director of Ars Electronica 
Linz and member of the Scientific Comission of 
LABoral) - met this last Tuesday, June 2nd, 
deciding unanimously to appoint Benjamin Weil to 
the position.
Benjamin Weil (Paris, 1962), has lived for a 
significant part of his life in the United 
States, where he graduated from the Whitney 
Independent Study Program in New York (1989). As 
a free lance critic and curator, he has put 
together numerous projects that include a public 
art contribution to the Aperto section of the 
45th Biennale di Venezia (1993). He has also 
contributed to such art magazines as Flash Art 
and Beaux-Arts Magazine. In 1994, he co-founded 
äda 'web, the first new media production studio 
dedicated to the production of net art projects 
as well as experiments in creating new 
documenting formats, collaborating with such 
institutions as The New School, Documenta and The 
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York.
In 1998, he was appointed as Director of the New 
Media Art Department at ICA London. In 2000, he 
moved back to the United States to assume the 
position of Media Curator at the San Francisco 
Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), where he stayed 
until 2006 and produced exhibitions with 
Pipilotti Rist, Christian Marclay, Gary Hill, 
Eija-Liisa Ahtila and many others.
During his tenure at SFMoMA, he also developed a 
sound program and a web commissioning program for 
the museum. It is also during that time that he 
served as Curatorial Chair at the Eyebeam Art + 
Technology Center in New York, and as Guest 
Curator at the Grande Halle de la Villette, where 
he organized the Zones of Confluence, media 
exhibition and public programs, as part of the 
New Media Festival Villette Numérique.
Weil also curated the 2005 and 2006 edition of 
Art | Film, a section of Art | Basel. In 2006, he 
took the position of Executive Director at 
Artists Space, where he created a Curatorial 
College of three young curators, who together 
with him helped re-dynamize the mission of this 
venerable alternative art space founded in 1972.
Since late 2005, Weil has also collaborated with 
Hermès, to conceptualize and direct H BOX, a 
video commissioning programme and traveling 
exhibition. To date, 16 works by emerging and 
confirmed artists have been produced, and the 
program, presented in a collapsible screening 
room by Didier Fiuza Faustino, has traveled to 
many institutions, including MUSAC (León), Tate 
Modern (London), and the Yokohama Triennale.
Weil was also a visiting professor at the Visual 
Arts Faculty of IUAV in early 2009.
As Chief Curator of LABoral, his responsibilities 
will include leading a select team charged with 
investigation in the centre's programming areas 
and contributing significantly to the development 
of a theoretical and practical discourse within 
the framework of the Direction and Management 
Project of LABoral's Director, Rosina 
Gómez-Baeza, and the conceptual axes deriving 
from it. Further, he will be required to give 
maximum importance to the generation of audiences 
during the development of the Centre's 
programmes, contributing in a decisive manner to 
the excellence of LABoral as a centre for 
exhibition, research and production on the 
international level. He will be actively 
implicated in the Asturian art scene and will 
look for ways to give it public exposure, 
including educational training and integration, 
seeking out opportunities in a global context.

His inclusion in the team of LABoral is scheduled 
for the beginning of next autumn.

http://www.laboralcentrodearte.org/noticias/show/410



2009 © Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial

Los Prados, 121- 33394 Cabueñes. Gijón (Asturias) 
Tel: +34 985 185 577 - email 
info at laboralcentrodearte.org



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