DUBLIN.- IMMA, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, announced the acquisition of the Paul O’Neill Archive to the IMMA Permanent Collection. To celebrate this important acquisition join guests Paul O’Neill (Director, Publics, Helsinki) and Gerrie van Noord (curators of publications and educator) for a conversation that draws on their ongoing collaboration, research and writing on curatorial practice, and their most recent publication titled Curious—edited by Paul O’Neill and Gerrie van Noord (Open Editions, 2024). The publication brings together a selection of archive interviews with curators and artists conducted by Paul O’Neill, marking a pivotal time in the evolving history and practice of contemporary curating.

The Paul O’Neill Archive comprises a large body of material spanning several decades of O’Neill’s work across the globe as an artist, curator, educator, researcher and writer, including publications, research and teaching material, exhibition and project ephemera and artworks. This Archive will be an invaluable resource for students, researchers, artists and curators and anyone with an interest in contemporary international curatorial theory and practice.

IMMA celebrates the recent acquisition of the archive with a discussion that looks at the vibrant and evolving history of contemporary curating and writing from the 1990s onward. The conversation draws upon a selection of readings and interviews featured in Curious, and O’Neill’s wider archive, in which to situate how writing and collaboration remain central to expanding the practice of contemporary curating over the last 20 years. The evening’s programme includes an introduction about the Archive by Paul O’Neill, a critical conversation moderated by Gerrie van Noord and formal address by Annie Fletcher, Director of IMMA.

Dr Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer and educator. He is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, a curatorial agency, library, events and exhibition space Helsinki. As a curator O’Neill is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, and leading scholar of curatorial practice, public art and exhibition histories. O’Neill has held numerous curatorial and research positions over the last thirty years, taught on many curatorial and visual arts programmes and has co-curated more than seventy curatorial projects across the world.

Dr Gerrie van Noord is a curator of publications and an educator who teaches on the MA Curating Contemporary Art MA at the Royal College of Art (since 2019). She is particularly interested in the potential of publishing as an arena of artistic as well as curatorial practice, and collaborative ways of working.

Annie Fletcher is Director of IMMA. Previously she was Chief Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and a tutor at de Appel, Amsterdam, the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and the Design Academy Eindhoven. She was co-founder and co-director of the rolling curatorial platform If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution with Frederique Bergholtz and Tanja Elstgeest (2005-10). In 2012, she was Curator of Ireland’s Contemporary Art biennale EVA International and is regularly called upon to sit on international juries, including the 2019 Preis der Nationalgalerie, Berlin; the 2016 Irish Pavilion at Venice; the 2015 Köler Prize, Estonia; the 2014 Turner Prize, UK; the 2013 Leopold Bloom Art Award, Hungary; and the 2011 BC21 Art Award, Austria.

Copies of the publication Curious are available to purchase at the launch and from all good bookshops.