Piper Marshall. Photo courtesy A.I.R. Gallery.

Independent curator Piper Marshall will organize the 2017 biennial for nonprofit Brooklyn gallery A.I.R., Artforum reports. She’s in distinguished company; previous curators include Connie Butler (now chief curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles), Anne Ellegood (Butler’s senior curator), and Charlotta Kotik (who served as a curator for decades at the Brooklyn Museum).

Marshall has been an independent curator since 2014, organizing exhibitions for New York dealer Mary Boone, including solos for Ericka Beckman, Judith Bernstein, Ryan McNamara, and John Miller. Initially hired to organize six shows, her contract has since been extended to twelve.

She had previously served as a curator for six years at the august downtown nonprofit Swiss Institute, where she organized exhibitions of artists including John Armleder, Jimmie Durham, Mai-Thu Perret, Sergei Tcherepnin, and Charline von Heyl. She got her start organizing exhibitions with Alex Gartenfeld, now deputy director and chief curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, at a gallery in their New York apartment.

Marshall earned a spot on artnet News’s 16 Female Curators Shaking Things Up list, as well as profiles in W Magazine and Vogue. She’s also completing an art history PhD at New York’s Columbia University, where she also attended college, and has written for publications such as Artforum and Art in America.

The commercial and academic settings complement one another, she told Vogue, saying, “Mary’s gallery is a place where I can practice curating and the university is a place where I can think through ideas—they feed each other very much so, as the gallery eventually provides a space to give form to the ideas.”

Established in 1972, the nonprofit A.I.R. focuses on women artists. Currently on view are exhibitions of Shadi Harouni, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Jane Swavely. The upcoming biennial will be the gallery’s 12th.


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