Ute Meta Bauer

"When people come together, a vibrancy is released, and you see engagement and change happening. I have always been interested in those short moments, a vacuum, when something new can be created and formed. This period, both here and globally, embodies that transformative arriving force."

 

 

Ute Meta Bauer was born in Germany and studied visual communication, stage design and art theory at Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Bauer is also an editor, professor, curator and, since 2013, she became the Founding Director of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, a national research centre of the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). As professor at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media she co-chairs the Master’s in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices, and her recent research projects focus on the link between cultural loss and the climate crisis.

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Over the course of her decades’ long career, Bauer has held leadership positions in cultural and academic institutions including Artistic Director of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (1990-1994); Professor of Theory, Practice and Communication of Contemporary Art and Vice Rector International Affairs at the Academy of fine Art Vienna (1996-2006); Founding Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway in Oslo (2002-2005) and Dean of the School of Fine Art, Royal College of Art, London (2012/2013). At Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Bauer served as Director of the Visual Art Program (2005-2009) and as Founding Director of ACT, MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2009-2012). Most recently she curated the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale featuring Shubigi Rao: Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book and was a curator of the 17th Istanbul Biennale alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar. Bauer was a co-curator of Documenta11 (2002) on the team of artistic director Okwui Enwezor and served as artistic director for the 3rd Berlin Biennale for contemporary art (2004). She was a co-curator with Paul C. Ha of the US Pavilion of the 55th Venice Art Biennale (2015) featuring artist Joan Jonas for which they received honorary mention for best National Pavilion.