CHARLES MEREWETHER

Charles Merewether is an art historian and curator. He is Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore. Educated in Australia, he received his Bachelor’s Degree in Literature and doctorate in Art History at the University of Sydney. Between 2007-8 he was Deputy Director of the Cultural District, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi for the Tourism Development & Investment Co. and in 2007 served as the Arts and Culture Consultant for the Emirates Foundation in the UAE and Visiting Professor of Contemporary Art in Suleimania, Kurdistan. He was Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Hong Kong International Art Fair (2007-2009), Artistic Director & Curator of the Biennale of Sydney (2004-2006), Collections Curator at the Getty Center, Los Angeles (1994-2004) and Inaugural Curator of the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico, (1991-1994).

Merewether has taught at the University of Sydney, Universidad Autonoma in Barcelona, the Universidad Ibero-Americana (Mexico City), and University of Southern California and been recipient of various Fellowships including Research Fellow at both the Institute of Advanced Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and ZKM, Karlsruhe as well as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, Australian National University (2004-2007), Fellow in Japan (2000) and at both Yale University and Universiy of Texas. He has curated exhibitions and published widely on modernism and contemporary art in Europe, East Asia, Australia and both North America and the Americas. His recent book publications include a co-edited volume of essays After the Event, (Manchester University Press, 2010); Under Construction: Ai Weiwei (2008), Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan 1950-1970, (2007); General and Commissioning Editor, Zones of Contact (2006) and Editor, The Archive (2006). Forthcoming is and he is currently writing a book on the cultural history of looting, and another on postwar Japan and the arts of crime.