Mark Godfrey
Born
Mark Benjamin Godfrey

London, United Kingdom
EducationUniversity College London
Occupation(s)Art historian, critic, and curator

Mark Benjamin Godfrey is a British art historian, critic, and curator. He was a curator at Tate Modern from 2007 to 2021.

Early life and education

Godfrey was born in the Hampstead Garden Suburb of London.[1] He is Jewish; his father was from Leeds and his mother was from South Africa.[2]

Godfrey pursued art curation from a young age.[3] His father regularly took him to art galleries, while his mother taught him a tradition of collecting Judaica. He joined the Habonim Dror youth movement and went to Israel in 1992 to work for Habonim.[2]

Godfrey earned his PhD in art history at University College London. His dissertation, titled Abstraction and the Holocaust, analysed the works of American artists and architects to "see how they addressed the Holocaust in an abstract way, without using direct images."[2] With the support of a Leverhulme Research Fellowship, he published his work in book form in 2007.[4] He was also a lecturer in art history and theory at the Slade School of Fine Art.[5]

Career

Tate Modern (2007–2021)

In 2007, Godfrey joined the Tate Modern as curator of contemporary art.[5] Godfrey co-curated, with Nicholas Serota, an exhibition on Gerhard Richter in 2011.[6] In 2014, he curated an exhibition on Richard Hamilton and co-curated exhibitions on Sigmar Polke (with Kathy Halbreich and Lanka Tattersall) and Christopher Williams (with Roxana Marcoci and Matthew Witkovsky).[7][8][9]

In 2017, Godfrey was a member of the jury that selected Anne Imhof as recipient of the Golden Lion for best national participation in the 57th Venice Biennale.[10][11] Later that year he co-curated Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power with Zoé Whitley. The exhibition examined the response of artists in America to the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent Black Power movement. It featured more than sixty artists including Frank Bowling, Betye Saar, and Barkley L. Hendricks.[12][13] ARTnews highlighted Soul of a Nation as one of the most important art exhibitions of the decade.[14] In 2019, Godfrey curated an exhibition on Franz West that included around two hundred works such as abstract sculptures, furniture, and collages.[2][15] Later that year he organised a retrospective on Olafur Eliasson.[16]

Paintings of Ku Klux Klan figures by Philip Guston were set to be part of a retrospective exhibited at the National Gallery of Art, the Tate Modern, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2020 and 2021. In September 2020, the museums announced the postponement of the exhibition until 2024 because of "the racial justice movement that started in the US" following the murder of George Floyd.[17][18] The decision generated controversy within the art world,[17][19][20] and Godfrey, who was set to curate the exhibition at Tate Modern, was suspended from his position as senior curator after criticising the decision on social media.[21][22] In March 2021, Godfrey announced his departure from the museum.[23]

Independent curator (2021–present)

Godfrey was guest curator of a 2021 exhibit on the works of New York-based artist Jacqueline Humphries at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio.[24]

In November 2022, Godfrey launched a free one-year course aimed for curators from low-income backgrounds, to be co-directed with Kerryn Greenberg and Rudi Minto de Wijs, who both previously worked at Tate.[25]

Awards and honours

Godfrey won the Absolut Art Award in art writing in 2015.[26] In 2020, he was recognised by the Association of Art Museum Curators for his work on Soul of a Nation.[27]

References

  1. ↑ Malby, Poppy (17 February 2019). "20 questions with... Mark Godfrey". British GQ. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Frazer, Jenni (4 March 2019). "The wild West show at Tate Modern". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  3. ↑ "Interview: Mark Godfrey On Curating Franz West's New Retrospective At Tate Modern". Something Curated. 19 February 2019. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
  4. ↑ "Abstract art and the Holocaust". University College London. 2 October 2007. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  5. 1 2 "Participant Biographies". Tate Papers (8). Autumn 2007. ISSN 1753-9854. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  6. ↑ ""Gerhard Richter: Panorama" at Neue Nationalgalerie". Artforum. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
  7. ↑ "Richard Hamilton curator talks about new Tate show". Phaidon Press. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
  8. ↑ Esplund, Lance (23 April 2014). "'Alibis: Sigmar Polke, 1963-2010' at the Museum of Modern Art". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
  9. ↑ Smith, Roberta (31 July 2014). "Kodak Moments, Deconstructed". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 26 March 2021.
  10. ↑ Russeth, Andrew (13 May 2017). "Golden Lions in Venice for Anne Imhof and Franz Erhard Walther, Silver for Hassan Khan". ARTnews.
  11. ↑ "57th Venice Biennale awards announced". ArtReview. 17 May 2017. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  12. ↑ Hutton, Belle (10 June 2020). "Then and Now: Art in the Age of Black Power". Another Magazine. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  13. ↑ Pobric, Pac (11 July 2017). "Tate Modern chronicles the rise of Black Power in post-war America". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  14. ↑ Durón, Maximilíano; Greenberger, Alex (17 December 2019). "The Most Important Art Exhibitions of the 2010s". ARTnews. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  15. ↑ Mora, Judith (19 February 2019). "Franz West transforms UK's Tate Modern into an interactive playground". EFE. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
  16. ↑ Keener, Katherine (7 July 2019). "Olafur Eliasson heads back to Tate Modern with extensive survey". Art Critique. Retrieved 13 March 2021.
  17. 1 2 Jacobs, Julia; Farago, Jason (25 September 2020). "Delay of Philip Guston Retrospective Divides the Art World". The New York Times. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  18. ↑ Helmore, Edward (27 September 2020). "Sense or censorship? Row over Klan images in Tate's postponed show". The Observer. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  19. ↑ Harris, Gareth (25 September 2020). "Critics, scholars—and even museum's own curator—condemn decision to postpone Philip Guston show over Ku Klux Klan imagery". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  20. ↑ Sanai, Leyla (16 October 2020). "Fury as Tate drops exhibit by anti-racist Jewish artist". Jewish News. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  21. ↑ Greenberger, Alex (28 October 2020). "Tate Senior Curator Reportedly Suspended for Comments on Guston Show Controversy". ARTnews. Retrieved 2 March 2021.
  22. ↑ Ruiz, Cristina (28 October 2020). "Tate suspends curator for publicly criticising its decision to delay Guston show". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 3 March 2021.
  23. ↑ Ruiz, Cristina (11 March 2021). "Tate curator Mark Godfrey, who was disciplined for questioning the decision to postpone a Philip Guston show, parts ways with institution". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  24. ↑ Gilson, Nancy (3 October 2021). "Visual Arts: Humphries exhibit at the Wexner Center an experiential event". The Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  25. ↑ Ruiz, Cristina (24 November 2022). "Tate veterans launch free—and paid—curating course, aimed at those from less-affluent backgrounds". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 10 March 2023.
  26. ↑ Miller, M. H. (8 May 2015). "Frances Stark, Mark Godfrey Win the 2015 Absolut Art Award". ARTnews. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
  27. ↑ "René Paul Barilleaux and Zoé Whitley Among Recipients of Curatorial Awards for Excellence". Artforum. 22 April 2020. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
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