New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has appointed Duygu Demir to the post of Curator of the university’s Art Gallery, and Research Assistant Professor of Art History.

As the NYUAD Art Gallery enters its tenth year of exhibitions and publications, Demir’s appointment advances the Gallery’s commitment to exhibition-making as a mode of investigation, supporting experimentation in form and concept, and charting new areas of art history.

Demir is an art historian and curator. Originally from Trkiye, she was a founding member of SALT, a research-based cultural institution in Istanbul. She earned her PhD from MIT, with funding from both MIT and Harvard University. Before joining NYUAD, Demir was an Assistant Professor of Art History at Sabanci University.

Executive Director and Chief Curator Maya Allison noted, “Since opening our campus on Saadiyat Island in 2014, I’ve witnessed the UAE’s arts ecosystem develop from a very few venues-though ones of critical importance-to a complex mix, alongside a community th
at grows in its reputation as a nourishing and welcoming place for artists to develop their practice.

“What does it mean to be growing a primary cultural sector rooted in this region? Our university’s role in exploring that question has crystallised: in our Art Gallery, our more free-form Project Space, and our Reading Room, NYU Abu Dhabi supports creative experimentation and the development of new bodies of knowledge.

Demir brings to this watershed moment in the UAE her very rare combination of scholarly training in non-Western modernism and her commitment to cultural production through exhibitions and programmes, which she did for many years even before proceeding to her PhD.

Source: Emirates News Agency (WAM)