Anthony Huberman, May 3rd, 8pm

Anthony Huberman is an independent curator and writer based in New York. He studied sociology and art history at Georgetown University, Washington. Huberman is currently the director of The Artist’s Institute, New York, and an adjunct professor at Hunter College, New York. Previously, he was chief curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; education director at MOMA P.S.1, New York; and curator at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He has contributed articles to magazines such as Artforum,BOMB, ArtReview, Modern Painters, Dot Dot Dot, and The Wire, as well as many exhibition catalogue essays. He has organized exhibitions and events with Larissa Harris under the name The Steins since 2007.

The Art of Giving (Paris Review)

January 27, 2011 | by Nana Asfour

Photograph courtesy of Anthony Huberman.

On a recent Friday night, lured by the promise of a secret performance, a throng of people piled into a small basement on Eldridge Street. By the time I had arrived, the place was densely packed, and in wading through the crowd I noticed that a foamy, doughy material covered the floor. Behind the front desk, an off-white painting by Lutz Bacher read, in bold black lettering, “Have you heard the one about the cow, the Frenchman, and the bottle of Budweiser?” Nearby, a smiling Justin Bieber stared out from a Chinese-like rectangular banner displayed on a coverless ironing board. It was hot and uncomfortable, and I pitied the blush-cheeked baby who was nestled in a BabyBjörn. The performance still hadn't started, but given that the exhibition on view featured artists Liam Gillick, Matt Keegan, and Amy Granat, I was willing to wait, sure that whatever lay ahead would be worthwhile.

Since it opened last September, the Artist’s Institute has hosted a number of intriguing short exhibitions, lasting only a day or a weekend. Conceived and run by thirty-five-year-old curator Anthony Huberman, whose résumé includes stints as education director of P. S. 1, curator at Palais de Tokyo, and chief curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, the space is quickly becoming a standout in the gallery-dense Lower East Side. Funded by Hunter College, it operates year-round as an affiliate to the school’s graduate visual-arts program. Huberman, who conducts a weekly seminar at Hunter related to the Institute, says he wanted to “counter the conveyor-belt problem in art where, before we have time to think about what a show means, it gets swallowed by what's next.” Each season, the Institute chooses one artist, the “anchor,” around which Huberman and his crew of student “researchers” mount exhibitions and events. The entire fall season was dedicated to the relatively unknown Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, a Frenchman and a friend of George Brecht. He served as inspiration, in the loosest sense, to the shows, and his commands to “unlearn,” “disinvent,” and “misunderstand” were somewhat adopted as the Institute's dogma.