Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (born December 2, 1957) is an Italian-American writer, art historian, and exhibition maker who served as the Director of Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Turin in 2009 and from 2016 to 2023.

In 1996, she curated the first anthological exhibition on the Italian post-war artist Roberto Burri in Rome (Palazzo delle Esposizioni), Brussels (Palais des Beaux Arts) and Munich (Lenbachhaus).

In 1997, Christov-Bakargiev organized Citta'-Natura, a collective exhibition of international artists including Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, Lawrence Weiner, Giovanni Anselmo, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Luca Vitone, Jannis Kounellis, Willie Doherty, Gary Hill and Mark Dion; the exhibition was presented in Rome in museums and public spaces, from the Palazzo delle Esposizioni through the Civic Museum of Zoology to the Botanical Garden.

In the winter of 2001, she curated the first retrospective on the Janet Cardiff exhibition, and the group show Animations with Pierre Huyghe and Angus Fairhurst to Oladele Bamgboye and Damián Ortega, among others.

At P.S.1, she also organized a series of experimental projects dedicated to emerging young artists in the New York area and around the world, including Nedko Solakov and Michael Rakowitz.

T1 TorinoTriennaleTremusei, the first Triennale di Torino, a project that inaugurated in November 2005 with the aim of exploring the conceptual gigantism and fragility of our gargantuan world, through two solo exhibitions by Takashi Murakami and Doris Salcedo, but also a group exhibition in entire city of works by 75 young artists from all over the world, including Tamy Ben-Tor, Fernando Bryce, Sebastián Díaz Morales, Jin Kurashige, Araya Radsjamroensook and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

The show presented new commissions from over 150 artists and other participants, including Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, William Kentridge, Manon de Boer, Tino Sehgal, Wael Shawky, Walid Raad, Etel Adnan,[14] Mariam Ghani and Goshka Macuga.

dOCUMENTA (13) also included an editorial project entitled 100 Notes - 100 Thoughts which was composed of facsimiles of existing notebooks, commissioned essays, collaborations and conversations.

[16][17] In addition to her work at Castello di Rivoli, Christov-Bakargiev also served as director of the Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin from 2016 to 2018;[18] both museums later merged during her tenure when she curated Colori.

[22] In 2022, Christov-Bakargiev helped curate A Cielo Aperto (Open Sky), four artworks by Olafur Eliasson, Otobong Nkanga, Susan Philipsz and Michelangelo Pistoletto erected throughout Cuneo, in Piedmont, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the non-profit Fondazione CRC.

For dOCUMENTA (13), she wrote several theses and commissioned over 100 essays for the three-volume catalog and publication series with Hatje Cantz "100 Gedanken / 100 Notizen (100 Notes / 100 Thoughts)".