Installation view, Diane Severin Nguyen: IF REVOLUTION IS A SICKNESS, SculptureCenter, New York (September 16–December 13, 2021). Courtesy of SculptureCenter. Photo credit: Charles Benton.

Since moving to Long Island City, Queens in 2001, SculptureCenter has been recognized as an incubator for curatorial talents and artists who have not reached broader critical attention. Commitments to curator-artist relationships, emerging ideas, and critical exchange contribute to SculptureCenter’s history of experimentation across disciplines. The next several years will mark experiments with new formats, exhibition timescales, and discursive frameworks through which SculptureCenter’s growing curatorial team will develop and reflect upon their work with art and artists.


In part, SculptureCenter’s upcoming curatorial program meets the political questions artists raise by embedding their work within modalities of being together, experimenting with sociality, collaboration, and the timing of exhibitions. New relationships between SculptureCenter’s exhibition schedule and physical gallery spaces will expand possibilities for hosting constituents and creating moments of conviviality that further connect artists and audiences through diverse points of entry. Formal and informal live programming began in late 2022 and will continue with a new residency model and art/music programming in summer/fall 2023. Likewise, SculptureCenter will continue an internal reappraisal of the ways that its exhibition program has historically followed the work of artists into new understandings of the materials, tools, and methodologies used to address the urgent issues of our time, from scientific and technological developments to structural reflections by artists impacted by extractive interventions. These findings will guide departmental priorities and decisions in the coming years. 


Installation view, Tishan Hsu: Liquid Circuit, SculptureCenter, New York (September 24, 2020–January 25, 2021). Courtesy of SculptureCenter. Photo credit: Kyle Knodell.

Concurrently, SculptureCenter will consider the role and responsibilities of curators and cultural workers through an initiative called Struggle with Art. Informed by disparate stakeholders and intended as a long-term project, Struggle With Art aims to address how to continue SculptureCenter’s work while reflecting on the possibilities of improving the conditions of the field around governance, institutional transparency, economic disparity, the environment, and other areas of inquiry.


Installation view, Rafael Domenech: Model to exhaust this place (SculptureCenter Pavilion), SculptureCenter, New York (January 16–March 23, 2020). Courtesy of SculptureCenter. Photo credit: Rafael Domenech.

Sohrab Mohebbi is Director of SculptureCenter and previously served as Curator/Curator-at-Large (2018-21), during which time he organized solo shows with Banu Cennetoğlu, Fiona Connor, Rafael Domenech, Rindon Johnson, Diane Severin Nguyen, and Christian Nyampeta; the first survey exhibition of Tishan Hsu; and the group show Searching the Sky for Rain (2019). Mohebbi serves as the Kathe and Jim Patrinos Curator of the 58th Carnegie International (2022) and an advisor at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. He was formerly Associate Curator at REDCAT, Los Angeles where he organized solo shows with Dave Hullfish Bailey, Tamara Henderson, John Knight, and Falke Pisano, in addition to It is obvious from the map (2017; co-curated by Thomas Keenan) and Hotel Theory (2015), the latter which received the Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2013). Mohebbi was the recipient of a 2012 Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers grant for his blog presencedocuments.

Kyle Dancewicz is the Deputy Director of SculptureCenter, following his previous appointment as Interim Director from 2020-22. Dancewicz has contributed to SculptureCenter’s artistic programs in different roles since 2016, overseeing nearly 40 exhibitions, 4 public art projects, and more than 70 public programs. His recent curatorial projects include solo exhibitions with Henrike Naumann, Lydia Ourahmane, Liz Larner, ektor garcia, Matt Keegan, and Jesse Wine, along with the group exhibitions Niloufar Emamifar, SoiL Thornton, and an Oral History of Knobkerry and In Practice: Total Disbelief. Prior to SculptureCenter, Dancewicz served as the Curatorial Manager of New York’s Madison Square Park Conservancy, overseeing its public art commissioning program for 3 years. He was a Mellon Foundation MCA Denver Animating Museums Fellow (2017-20) and holds a BA in Art History from Harvard University. His writing has appeared in Art in America and Cura. among other periodicals, exhibition catalogs, and publications.

Sophia Cosmadopoulous, Anna Schechter, Summertime Gallery