PITTSBURGH, PA.- Lynn Zelevansky, The Henry J. Heinz II Director of Carnegie Museum of Art, has named a three-person team of curators to organize the 56th Carnegie International, which is scheduled to open in October 2013. The team will comprise curator Daniel Baumann, associate curator Dan Byers, and associate curator Tina Kukielski. The Carnegie International, initiated in 1896, is one of the world’s preeminent surveys of contemporary art. This is the first time in the International’s history that a curatorial team of three people will organize the exhibition.

“This new structure will allow the International to result from a conversation among three very talented individuals of different ages, nationalities, and perspectives. I’m excited and intrigued to see what is produced out of this collaboration, which seems suited to our increasingly globalized world,” said Zelevansky. “The curators bring their own strengths to the exhibition. Daniel is an active member of the international contemporary art world with a reputation for original thematic exhibitions, sensitive curating of public art, and also serious attention to outsider artists. Tina brings her extensive experience working with emerging artists and producing large-scale monographic exhibitions and scholarly catalogues at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Dan’s programming of Carnegie Museum of Art’s Forum Gallery, experience working on large thematic exhibitions at the Walker Art Center , and institutional knowledge of the Carnegie’s collections anchors the team.”

Baumann will be based in Europe until he moves to Pittsburgh with his family in September 2012; he will remain at the museum through December 2013. Kukielski comes to Carnegie Museum of Art in January 2011 and will remain at the museum through the run of the exhibition, while Byers, a permanent member of the museum staff, has been with Carnegie Museum of Art since 2009.

“The fact that Daniel will remain in Switzerland for the first 18 months of planning will facilitate research in Europe and provide the Carnegie International with an intimate understanding of the art produced there,” said Zelevansky. “Daniel, Dan, and Tina will travel and research individually, as well as together, and meet regularly, sharing ideas, and allowing the organizational process to cover more ground and the art to be explored in greater depth.”

The Curatorial Team
Daniel Baumann
Baumann currently lives in Basel, Switzerland, and is considered one of the most innovative contemporary curators in Europe. He has organized more than 60 exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the world in such cities as Kyoto , New York, Vienna, Hong Kong, Glasgow, Tbilisi , and Basel.

After earning his degree in art history and German literature at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, in 1996, Baumann became the curator of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation at the Museum of Fine Arts in Bern , Switzerland , a position he currently holds. Baumann is also co-founder of the Shift Festival for Digital Arts, established in 2007, and New Jerseyy, an internationally acclaimed exhibition space in Basel dedicated to contemporary art, film, music, and publishing. Additionally, Baumann is the curator of Nordtangente-Kunsttangente, a Basel-based project for art in public spaces.

Highlights of Baumann’s career include the landmark 2003 show on Swiss visionary outsider artist Adolf Wölfli at the American Folk Art Museum in New York . The New York Times called it a “stunning retrospective.” In 1997, he organized the first retrospective of Martin Kippenberger's work Martin Kippenberger. Respektive 1997–1976 at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva and, in 1998, together with Peter Pakesch, the first survey of Kippenberger‘s self-portraits at Kunsthalle Basel. In 2004, Baumann co-founded an ongoing exhibition series in Tbilisi , Georgia , with a group of art historians and artists. These yearly celebrations of contemporary art and culture have brought the art world to the small European country that during its short independence (1918–1921) was considered the “ Paris of the East.” The period of independence was marked by an inspired community of artists who developed unprecedented creative practices and collaborated to produce astonishing works of art. In 2009, Baumann was the co-curator of the show The Fantastic Tavern: The Tbilisi Avant-Garde at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York , which reintroduced the works of these artists to an American audience. In 2009 Baumann was a co-advisor for Frame, a section within the Frieze Art Fair dedicated to solo artist presentations. He will hold that position again for the 2010 Frieze Art Fair in October.

Baumann has published more than 100 articles in catalogs and publications such as Camera Austria, Kunst-Bulletin, Flash Art, Mousse, Pacemaker, Parkett, Piktogram, and Spike Art Quarterly.

Dan Byers
Byers is the associate curator of contemporary art at Carnegie Museum of Art, a position he has held since 2009. In addition to working on acquisitions and public programs, he is the curator of the current Forum Gallery exhibition, Forum 65: Jones, Koester, Nashashibi/Skaer: Reanimation. Byers is currently organizing Ordinary Madness, opening October 15, an exhibition that includes more than 100 works from the museum’s rich holdings of contemporary art, including a film series of 16mm films from the 1960s and 1970s, and a gallery of never-before-exhibited artworks and archival material by James Lee Byars. Other upcoming shows that Byers is organizing include Forum 66: Ragnar Kjartansson, opening March 11, 2011 which is the Icelandic artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States .

Before coming to Carnegie Museum of Art, Byers was curatorial fellow at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where he worked on the exhibitions The Quick and the Dead (curated by Peter Eleey) and Abstract Resistance (curated by Yasmil Raymond), among others. From 2003 to 2006, Byers was assistant to the directors at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia . He received his MA from Bard College ’s Center for Curatorial Studies, where he organized the thesis exhibition (loverboy), sleep, shatter, handheld bird: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Rodney Graham, Barry Le Va , and Charles Ray. Byers holds a BS in studio art from Skidmore College .

Tina Kukielski
Kukielski was, most recently, a senior curatorial assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art, a position she had held since 2002. While at the Whitney, Kukielski curated numerous exhibitions, including Sara VanDerBeek: To Think of Time (2010); Omer Fast: Nostalgia (2009-2010); A Few Frames: Photography and the Contact Sheet (2010); Sadie Benning: Play Pause (2009); Corin Hewitt: Seed Stage (2008–2009); Resistance Is...(2007); Beth Campbell: Following Room (2007); Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007); and The New City: Sub/urbia in Recent Photography (2005). She also worked on, and contributed to, numerous exhibitions including William Eggleston: Democratic Camera; Photographs and Video, 1961–2008; and Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure, both organized by Whitney curator Elisabeth Sussman.

In the summer of 2004, Kukielski co-curated The Freedom Salon exhibition with Apsara DiQuinzio at Deitch Projects in New York . Providing an open forum for the expression and consideration of critical issues facing the nation and the world at large during the run-up to the presidential election, The Freedom Salon brought together works by more than 40 contemporary artists.

Kukielski has published dozens of essays in exhibition catalogues, including William Eggleston: Democratic Camera; Photographs and Video, 1961–2008; and Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure.

She received her BA in art history from Boston University and is currently a doctoral student in art since 1900 at The Graduate Center, City University of New York.

“Daniel, Dan, and Tina possess a wealth of talent and energy. I could not be more thrilled about the insights and perspectives this fine collaboration will bring to Carnegie Museum of Art. With this team, the 2013 Carnegie International promises to again focus the eyes of the art world on our exceptional museum,” said William E. Hunt, chairman of the Board of Carnegie Museum of Art.

Assisting the team is contemporary art departmental assistant Amanda Donnan, who has been with Carnegie Museum of Art since the fall of 2009. She recently organized the museum‘s first-ever Two-Minute Film Festival and is currently coordinating screenings of experimental film from the museum’s collection for the upcoming exhibition Ordinary Madness. While pursuing her master's degree in art history at Stony Brook University , Amanda interned at the Whitney Museum of American Art and at Cabinet Magazine, and was previously the season four production coordinator at Art21 in New York City .

The Carnegie International
When Pittsburgh industrialist Andrew Carnegie founded Carnegie Institute in 1895, one of his bold ambitions was to create the country’s first museum of contemporary art. The exhibition series he established the following year would become the linchpin of that scheme. Through the Carnegie International, which was to bring to Pittsburgh the best of contemporary art from around the world, Carnegie sought to educate audiences, attract the art world to Pittsburgh, and above all, to build a collection through the purchase of the “Old Masters of tomorrow.” Today, the exhibition continues to shape the museum, remaining a major vehicle for the acquisition of works for the collection. The Carnegie International was the first exhibition of international contemporary art in North America and the second in the world; the Carnegie International opened in 1896, only five months after the Venice Biennale.

The museum has acquired nearly 400 works of art that have appeared in previous Carnegie International exhibitions, including works by Josef Albers, Dara Birnbaum, Louise Bourgeois, Mary Cassatt, Isa Genzken, Robert Gober, Dan Graham, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, Mike Kelley, Ellsworth Kelly, Louise Lawler, Glenn Ligon, Agnes Martin, Julie Mehretu, Bruce Nauman, Chris Ofili, On Kawara, Nam June Paik, Sigmar Polke, Auguste Rodin, Doris Salcedo, John Singer Sargent, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Kara Walker, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Additionally the museum has acquired numerous other works by artists who have been represented in previous Carnegie Internationals.

Prizes awarded to Carnegie International artists include the Carnegie Prize for outstanding achievement in the exhibition in the context of a lifetime of work, and the Fine Prize for an emerging artist in the exhibition.