Palestinian curator Reem Fadda has been announced as the recipient of the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement; she will receive $20,000 (about £15,400). Established in 2001 in honour of the Menil Collection’s founding director Walter Hopps, the biennial award recognises early to mid-career curators for their significant contribution to the field of contemporary art and is funded by the Collection.
Based between Ramallah, Palestine, and Amman, Jordan, Fadda served from 2010 to 2016 as Associate Curator of Middle Eastern Art for the Abu Dhabi Project of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. From 2005 to 2007, she was director of the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art (PACA) and worked as academic director for the International Academy of Art Palestine, which she helped found in 2006. She has been involved in many international exhibitions, including the UAE Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale; Ramallah Syndrome, part of the Venice Biennale in 2009; and Liminal Spaces, a four-year artistic and political project beginning in 2006 consisting of conferences, tours, art residencies, and exhibitions in Palestine, Israel and Germany. In 2009, she co-curated the Riwaq Biennale in Ramallah, with Charles Esche. She was granted a Fulbright scholarship to pursue her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University. Fadda was the curator of the 6th edition of the Marrakech Biennale in 2016. She will curate the inaugural exhibition of the Palestinian Museum, in Ramallah opening on 1 September 2017.
24 May 2017