Exhibit Columbus has built another platform to high-profile visibility.
This time it comes through an inaugural curatorial fellowship — one featuring two design leaders with a global reputation.
The duo will provide programming guidance and direction along with the Exhibit Columbus staff for the organization’s fall symposium — which could be virtual and/or in person — and its 2021 exhibition of temporary architectural installations highlighting the city’s celebrated Modernist past and present.
Landmark Columbus Foundation, Exhibit Columbus’ parent agency, has announced that Chicago architect, curator and editor Iker Gil and Los Angeles-based critic, editor, author and curator Mimi Zeiger will be among the first of a series of international leaders to influence a reshaped Exhibit Columbus, a popular celebration of art, architecture, design and community.
The pair has worked together on a range of major projects in the past 12 years. That includes being co-curators with two others of the U.S. Pavilion for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, the world’s largest art and architecture festival that attracts about half a million people.
“It’s great to be able to work with Iker again,” Zeiger said. “We both admire the other’s work.”
Iker said he would hope some of their work could help position “Columbus as something of a think tank even for the rest of the U.S,” as he put it.
In the past, Exhibit Columbus staff has worked with a 12-person board on its symposiums and exhibitions that began in 2016. Exhibit Columbus leaders still champion the expertise of those leaders, said Anne Surak, Exhibit Columbus director.
“But we want to use this as an opportunity to bring new voices to the project,” Surak said. “We really feel like allowing some fresh eyes to look at the program and how we do things, and then apply their expertise would be really interesting. And now we’ll have that evolve every two years.”
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
