Ruba Katrib Sculpts A New Identity

Art

Curator Ruba Katrib helps take the SculptureCenter in a bold direction

When the SculptureCenter hired Ruba Katrib to be its curator in early 2012, it got a contributor whose development was parallel to its own history in its dynamic exhibition space in Long Island City. Although the avant-garde art center had been founded in 1928 and played a vital role in the New York art scene of the 1980s and ’90s, it made an adventurous leap when it relocated to a former trolley factory, which had been revamped by artist and designer Maya Lin, eight blocks away from MoMA PS1 in 2001. While the SculptureCenter was making a new place for itself on the city’s cultural map, Katrib was acquiring the skills that would lead her to its doors.

The daughter of Syrian immigrants — her father is a physician and her mother is a therapist — Katrib grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. Her first real exposure to art was in New York City museums, which she visited on her own while spending time with her Queens–based grandparents as a teenager. She studied art in junior high and high school, where she taught art classes in after-school programs. Following graduation, she enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000.

"I always like to leave a little room—if not a lot of room—for surprise and experimentation."

Halfway into her undergrad degree, Katrib altered her course, deciding that she would aim to be a curator rather than an artist. She hooked up with a few friends to start threewalls, a non-profit space in Chicago with a gallery and residency program for emerging artists. She oversaw the organization’s file of works by Chicago artists and got her first crack at curating there.

“There was a DIY attitude in Chicago, where you just made things happen, and a very strong sense of community,” Katrib says. “We had a big focus on our programs, and it was interesting to see how certain gestures could galvanize a community. That’s something that stuck with me.”

While curating at threewalls and going to school, Katrib worked as a development assistant at Chicago’s edgy Renaissance Society, where she picked the director’s and curator’s brains, and then as an intern in the curatorial department of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. 

“I think it’s important to get an understanding of a range of contexts, because although there are similarities, there are also differences in the basic missions of these organizations,” Katrib says. “It was really important for me to understand the specificities of each place.”

After getting a bachelor’s degree in visual and critical studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Katrib searched for the right grad school and chose Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, well-known for its intensive curatorial program. “Even though I really wanted to be in New York City, Bard has one of the best curatorial programs out there,” Katrib says. “Being in a place with some seclusion was important. After going to undergrad in a city where you’re mixed in with everything and hanging out with all kinds of people, it was really nice to be in a very focused and intimate environment. It was definitely the right place to go.”

Johannes Vanderbeek, Installation View, A Disagreeable Object (Photo: Jason Mandella)

Aneta Grzeszykowska, Headache, 2008, From A Disagreeable Object (Courtesy The Artist and Raster Gallery, Warsaw)

Susanne M. Winterling, The Dip of Generosity, 2009-2012, From A Disagreeable Object (Photo: Jason Mandella)

Martin Solo Clement, Equation of Desire, 2010-2011, From A Disagreeable Object (Courtesy The Artist and Clifton Benevento, New York)

In 2007, she gained her masters degree from Bard and quickly found a job as an assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, where she started out doing research for director and chief curator Bonnie Clearwater, a highly respected player in the contemporary art world. Before long, Katrib was entrenched in Miami’s vibrant local art scene and began a “theory night,” which was a casual gathering of artists in cafés and studios to share their thoughts on critical readings. In the fall of 2008, she curated her first show at MOCA—Dark Continents—that presented the work of eight women artists who had links to femininity and nature and questioned the aesthetics of the “primitive” and “exotic” in modern art. 

Katrib organized two more lively group shows with an international mix of artists at MOCA in 2009 and was rapidly promoted to associate curator. In 2010, she curated her first one-person show, an overview of the work by the hot Internet artist and software manipulator Cory Arcangel, and, less than three months later, she followed it with a solo exhibition of the work of Claire Fontaine, a French artists’ collective exploring social issues through art. After organizing a couple of equally engaging group shows and a comprehensive two-day “New Methods” symposium on DIY art spaces in Latin America at MOCA in 2011, Katrib made the jump to New York.

Around the same time as landing at the SculptureCenter, Katrib was tapped to co-organize “Why New Forms?,” a two-day curatorial conference at CCS Bard that presented  some of the sharpest minds—including MoMA PS1’s Peter Eleey, New Museum’s Lauren Cornell, and MOCA LA’s Paul Schimmel—working in the creative field today. While organizing that incredible gathering of talent, Katrib was also working on her first show for SculptureCenter, A Disagreeable Object, featuring 20 international artists exploring ideas of the subconscious and commodity culture in times of war and economic crisis, which was on view last fall.

Surprisingly, nearly half of the works in A Disagreeable Object—as in most of Katrib’s thematic shows—were created especially for the exhibition. “One of the things that’s important to me is producing new work and allowing artists to develop something without really knowing what it might be,” Katrib says. “It varies from exhibition to exhibition, but I always like to leave a little room—if not a lot of room—for surprise and experimentation.”

A contemporary art curator with an intuitive eye and an endless number of ideas yet to explore, Ruba Katrib has accomplished a lot in the past 10 years, but most people that know her believe that her star is only starting to rise.