Ami Barak is an independent curator and art critic based in Paris. Former director of the Frac (regional collection of contemporary art) Languedoc-Roussillon from 1993 to 2002 and General Associated Curator of “Public Treasuries, 20 Years of Creation in the Fracs” (2003), he was also the President of the International Association of Contemporary Art Curators – IKT from 2002 to 2005. Former Head of the Visual Art Department at the City Council of Paris (2003-2008), he was the Artistic Director and Coordinator of ‘Nuit Blanche’ (“Sleepless Night” Contemporay Art Festival) in Paris in 2003 and 2004 and initiated the public commissioning program “Art for the Tram”, including projects by Sophie Calle/Frank Gehry, Dan Graham, Peter Kogler, Claude Lévêque, Christian Boltanski, Bertrand Lavier, Angela Bulloch and Didier Fiuza Faustino. Over the past twenty years, he has curated numerous international exhibitions among which, in the recent years: House Trip, ArtForum Berlin (2007, Berlin); Can Art Do More? (2008, Jerusalem), co-curated with Bernard Blistène; Re-construction, Young Artists Biennial 3 (2008, Bucharest); Americans in New York (Matthew Day Jackson, Jill Magid, Mika Rottenberg, Laurel Nakadate, Marc Ganzglass) Galerie Michel Rein, Paris 2008; For Ever Young, (2008, Anne+, Paris); Elixirs of Panacea (2010, Palais Benedictine, Fecamp); The Borrowed Garden (2010, Gardens of Palais Royal, Paris); Romances sans paroles (2010, Kunsthalle, Mulhouse); Communism Never Happened (2011, CuratedBy, Charim Galerie, Vienna); Play Time, a selection of works from the Klosterfelde Collection (2011, L.A.C., Sigean); and a series of solo shows held at the JGM Galerie in Paris of Ion Grigorescu (2008), Edi Hila (2009), Peter Kogler (2009), Fred Wilson (2010), Laurie Simmons (2010), Chourouk Hriech (2010), Sui Jianguo (2010), Mohammed Elbaz (2011). His most recent major curatorial project was Art for the World [the Expo] the City of Forking Paths, the Sculpture Project of the Expo Boulevard at the World Expo Shanghai 2010 featuring twenty monumental sculptures of Chinese and International artists. He is currently a Lecturer at the Paris Sorbonne I University, works as an art adviser, and is a permanent collaborator for the magazine IDEA arts+society.
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