The next event in the Collectivity room at the Museum of Care will be a conversation with Viktor Misiano, a Russian contemporary art curator and theorist. During the event, we will delve into Soviet and post-Soviet history and explore the art communities of that era, their culture, attitudes towards collectivity, and socially accepted norms.
Viktor Misiano
Born in Moscow in 1957. From 1980 till 1990 he was a curator of contemporary art at the Pushkin National Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow. From 1992 to 1997 he was the director of the Center for Contemporary Art (CAC), Moscow. He curated the Russian participation in the Istanbul Biennale (1992), the Venice Biennale (1995, 2003), the Valencia Biennale (2001) and the São Paulo Biennale (2002, 2004). He was on the curatorial team for the Manifesta I in Rotterdam in 1996. In 1993 he was a founder of the Moscow Art Magazine (Moscow) and has been its editor-in-chief ever since; in 2003 he was a founder of the Manifesta Journal: Journal of Contemporary Curatorship (Amsterdam) and has been an editor there since 2011. In 2005 he curated the first Central Asia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2007 he realized large scale exhibition project “Progressive Nostalgia: Art from the Former USSR” in the Centro per l’arte contemporanea, Prato (Italy), the Benaki Museum, Athens, KUMU, Tallinn, and KIASMA, Helsinki. His most recent curatorial project is a large-scale multidisciplinary initiative “The Human Condition” supported by National Centre for Contemporary Arts, Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center. Author of many articles, catalogues and books: “’Other’ and Divers”, NLO, Moscow in 2004; “Five Lectures on Curatorship”, AdMarginem Publishing, Moscow in 2014; «Curator Without a System. Viktor Misiano: Selected Writings», Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2022. From October 2010 to 2014 he was a Chairman of the International Foundation Manifesta. Honorary doctorate from the Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki. Lives in Moscow (Russia) and Cisternino (Italy).