CAMBRIDGE, MASS.- Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University announced the appointment of Dan Byers as the John R. and Barbara Robinson Family Director, beginning June 1. Byers will create a long-range vision for CCVA and oversee exhibitions and programs, developing a platform that brings together artists, exhibitions, students, and communities at Harvard and beyond. Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is housed alongside the Visual and Environmental Studies Department and Harvard Film Archive in the only Le Corbusier structure designed and built in North America.
“Dan Byers has a wealth of curatorial expertise, and he is arriving when ambitions for the arts at Harvard are stronger than ever. I look forward to supporting his efforts to make the Carpenter Center buzz and spark,” said Robin Kelsey, Dean of Arts and Humanities, Harvard University.
Lynette Roth, Head of the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art, Harvard Art Museums said, “Dan’s thoughtful, dynamic and collaborative curatorial practice is well-suited to the teaching and research mission of the university. We are eager to strengthen further our shared commitment to the production and exhibition of contemporary art with Dan at CCVA’s helm.”
Byers commented, “I am thrilled to join the thriving arts community at Harvard, and honored to lead the Carpenter’s excellent staff to collaborate with colleagues close at hand in the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard Film Archive, and Harvard Art Museums, and to make connections within the larger institutional and intellectual framework of Harvard University. Le Corbusier’s emblematic building orchestrates overlapping programs of galleries, cinematheque, archive, studios, bookstore, classrooms, and commons. These activities provide a rich context for presenting contemporary art exhibitions and events. I foresee a diverse program with artists at its center, building on CCVA’s recent reinvigoration, to create a program that is locally and internationally relevant, experimental, and inclusive, the kind of art center we need now more than ever.”
Previously Byers served as the Mannion Family Senior Curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston since 2015. His recent ICA projects include solo exhibitions of Diane Simpson and Geoffrey Farmer, as well as the group exhibitions The Artist’s Museum and the 2017 Foster Prize Exhibition.
Before his move to Boston, Byers was the Richard Armstrong Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Carnegie Museum of Art, where he was co-curator, with Daniel Baumann and Tina Kukielski, of the 2013 Carnegie International, a widely-acclaimed global exhibition which staged a conversation among four parts: a major exhibition of new international art, a project on artist and architect-designed playgrounds, the museum’s collection, and an engagement with the city of Pittsburgh. In addition to the International and overseeing the museum’s collection and display of modern and contemporary art, his other projects there included solo exhibitions of Cathy Wilkes, Ragnar Kjartansson, and James Lee Byars, as well as the group exhibitions Ordinary Madness and Reanimation: Jones, Koester Nashashibi/Skaer.
In addition to also holding positions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, he has taught at Lesley University and Carnegie Mellon University. He holds an M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College.
