Galit Eilat Receives Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism

Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and its Human Rights Project announced Amsterdam-based independent curator and writer, Galit Eilat, to be the fourth recipient of the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism, which provides an annual grant of USD 80,000.

Galit Eilat founded the non-profit Israeli Center for Digital Art at Holon, Israel, and was its director from 2001 to 2010. Under her leadership, the center became a site for collaborations between Israeli and Palestinian artists and other art organizations from the Near East. She also worked as the curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, and as an advisor for the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In 2004, she co-founded Maarav, an online Israeli art and culture magazine, and worked as its editor in chief until 2010. Additionally, she served as artistic director of the Akademie der Künste der Welt in Cologne from 2012 to 2013 and was a curator for many major art exhibitions, including the Polish Pavilion in the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 and the 31st Bienal de São Paulo held three years later.

Named in tribute to the late American artist, the Keith Haring Fellowship in Art and Activism at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, is made possible through a five-year grant of USD 400,000 from the Keith Haring Foundation. The fellowship encourages researchers, artists and activists to teach and conduct research at both CCS Bard and the Human Rights Project, focusing on multidisciplinary studies of the sociopolitical roles of art. Tom Eccles, the executive director of CCS Bard said that the fellowship is “one of the most dynamic cross-disciplinary programs at Bard.”

As a researcher, Galit Eilat writes extensively on art and politics. In her own words, Eilat’s work “creates conditions to untangle knowledge through collective encounters and experiences,” while searching for ways to “challenge the status quo in order to open a space to perceive the new, the unfamiliar, and possibilities for courageous actions in time.” At Bard College, Eilat will pursue a research project entitled “Syndrome of the Present,” which interrogates “the sovereignty, present conflicts and eschatological movements through the 17th century myth of Westphalia.” She will also hold seminars in human rights and curatorial studies at Bard. Eilat will take up her one-year appointment in September and teach at Bard during the fall semester.

Last year’s recipient of the fellowship were architects and artists Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, who are co-authors of the book Architecture After Revolution (2013). Two years ago, Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and Delhi-based artist Shuddhabrata Sengupta also received the fellowship.

Jia Dong is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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