NEW YORK, NY.- The Armory Show announced today Gabriel Ritter, Curator and Head of Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), and Jen Mergel, formerly the Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, as curators for the 2018 fair.

The Armory Show also announced the inauguration of a curatorial leadership summit to take place during the 2018 fair, chaired by Naomi Beckwith, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The summit will bring together over a dozen of the world’s most prominent curators for a daylong program aimed at cultivating new ideas and developments within the curatorial landscape.

Ritter will oversee the fair’s Focus section, comprised of solo- and dual-artist presentations of new or rarely seen work by today’s most relevant and compelling artists. Mergel will develop ambitious artists projects for Platform, which debuted in 2017 as a section devoted to large-scale and site-specific artworks that respond to the fair’s vast industrial space on Piers 92 & 94.

Ritter and Mergel were selected after an extensive review of candidates from across the United States and Europe. “Ultimately, we selected curators that have strong institutional affiliations and experience building collections in the United States,” says Benjamin Genocchio, Executive Director of The Armory Show.

“I am thrilled to lead the fair’s critically acclaimed Focus section next year,” remarks Ritter. “I look forward to working with The Armory Show team to present a diverse and thought-provoking group of artists that includes both historically underrepresented figures as well as some of today's most urgent voices."

Ritter was appointed Curator and Head of Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) in May 2016 and has since organized Now Where Were We?, an encyclopedic reinstallation of the Contemporary permanent collection galleries in collaboration with LA-based artist Dave Muller. Prior to Ritter’s appointment to the Mia, he served as Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art for four years.

Mergel says “I am pleased to join The Armory Show as the curator for Platform. The Platform section is an exceptional opportunity to commission and present large-scale artworks in a unique venue, and I greatly look forward to selecting and working with the artists and participating galleries to realize installations of great significance and relevance in 2018."

Mergel is an independent curator based in Boston, Massachusetts and currently serves as Vice President, Programming, for the Association of Art Museum Curators, an international membership group for the art curatorial profession. From 2010-2017, Mergel served as Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she stewarded over 350 acquisitions for the museum’s collection, including major works by El Anatsui, Lynda Benglis, Mark Bradford, Tara Donovan, Anish Kapoor, Christian Marclay, Ernesto Neto, Martin Puryear, R.H. Quaytman and Fred Wilson, among others.

“Set in the heart of the world’s art capital, The Armory Show has a unique opportunity to facilitate dialogue among international thought leaders in the curatorial profession," notes Nicole Berry, Deputy Director of The Armory Show. “We are thrilled work with Gabe and Jen on Focus and Platform, and to inaugurate this new curatorial summit with Naomi, further developing the fair’s role as an incubator for new ideas and practices among the world's top curators.”

In 2018, The Armory Show will double the size of this year’s Focus section, following the critical success of last’s year’s Focus, entitled What Is To Be Done? and curated by Jarrett Gregory. The Platform section, which debuted last year with An Incident, curated by Eric Shiner, will also expand, allowing for more artist commissions and site-specific artworks.

“The growth of these curated sections and the introduction of a curatorial leadership summit reflect The Armory Show’s core identity as a place for presenting new ideas and strong curatorial viewpoints,” remarks Genocchio. “Building on the success of the 2017 fair, we are thrilled to work with Gabe, Jen and Naomi to place artists and curators at the center of the fair once again, creating an exciting place of discovery for our over 65,000 visitors.”

Beckwith, Mergel and Ritter join a list of prominent curatorial talent with whom The Armory Show has engaged in recent years including Philip Tinari, Director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing; Omar Kholeif, Manilow Senior Curator at the MCA Chicago and most recently Jarrett Gregory, curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and Eric Shiner, former Director of The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.