Latest York’s Whitney Museum of American Art has announced artist, author, activist, and educator Gregg Bordowitz as the brand new director of its renowned Independent Study Program (ISP), effective February 1. Bordowitz, a 1985–86 alumnus of this system and a visiting faculty member there for a few years, succeeds founding ISP director Ron Clark, who’s retiring after greater than five many years within the role. Prior to accepting his post on the Whitney, Bordowitz, a longtime contributor to Artforum, taught on the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He arrived there as a professor twenty-five years ago before rising to chair the department of film, video, and animation after which, in 2013, to founding director of the college’s low-residency master of advantageous arts program.
“It’s so vital to have an artist lead the ISP, which has long focused its program on next-generation creators,” said Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg in an announcement. “Gregg is a perfect successor to assist launch the ISP into an exciting recent chapter given his deep knowledge of critical theory, art history and curatorial work. Furthermore, he has a longtime history with this system, as each a participant and educator.”
A Latest York native, Bordowitz emerged within the Nineteen Eighties because the founding father of the video/film collectives Testing the Limits and Diva TV. During this time, embraced a creative practice that centered and responded to the AIDS crisis. As a member of the seminal activist organization ACT UP, he organized and documented protests, and advocated for health education and harm reduction geared toward ending the pandemic. His work has been exhibited on the Whitney, in addition to on the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Artists Space, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Latest Museum, all in Latest York: and Tate Modern, London, amongst other institutions. He was recently the topic of the traveling retrospective “Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well,” organized by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, and spanning thirty years.
“My participation within the ISP, as a participant after which faculty for over 30 years, shapes my ongoing education as an artist and a teacher. Study is a lifestyle,” Bordowitz said in an announcement. “Teaching is the art of learning. The teacher teaches learning, as learning teaches the scholars; as learning teaches the teacher to show. That is an ongoing means of continually renewing amazement.”
The ISP since 1968 has nurtured the careers of artists, curators, art historians, and critics. Along with Bordowitz, alumni of this system include artists Jennifer Allora, Tony Cokes, Danielle Dean, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Renée Green, Jenny Holzer, Emily Jacir, Glenn Ligon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Julian Schnabel; critics and art historians Huey Copeland, Miwon Kwon, Pamela M. Lee, and Roberta Smith; and curators Carlos Basualdo, Naomi Beckwith, and Sheena Wagstaff.
