The Parrish Art Museum Director Terrie Sultan announced the appointment of Corinne Erni as its new Curator of Special Projects to become effective September 1, 2016. Erni replaces Andrea Grover, who begins her new position as the Executive Director of Guild Hall on the same day. Erni brings to the Parrish nearly 20 years of experience in creating game-changing art programs that engage communities locally and resonate globally, explained the Parrish.
Erni is the creative force behind the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY—a ground-breaking, collaborative arts initiative and internationally recognized biennial—and the co-founder ARTPORT_making waves, of a seminal global curatorial platform on art and climate change.
“We are thrilled to welcome Corinne Erni to the curatorial team at the Parrish,” stated Sultan in the announcement. “She fully understands the notion of strong local ties with a global outlook. Her high level of expertise in engaging multiple, diverse audiences and fomenting interdisciplinary collaborations will enable the Parrish to fully embrace our mission as a center for cultural engagement, an inspiration and destination for the region, the nation, and the world.”
Erni echoed Sultan's enthusiasm. “I am very passionate about the exploration of creative processes that transcend boundaries between disciplines but also between art and its audiences, which is why I highly value the original concepts and exhibition models of the Parrish Art Museum,” Erni stated. “Relying on my deep-rooted relationships and extensive networks within the contemporary art community, I hope to expand these concepts and establish the Parrish as an ever stronger voice in this global community, building on its success in connecting the East End of Long Island to the national and international art world.”
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Corinne Erni at The Parrish Art Museum. Courtesy of the Parrish.
Erni began her tenure at the New Museum in 2010 as project manager and ultimately senior producer (2015) of IDEAS CITY, an arts festival that galvanized the creative community both on the Lower East Side and in cities worldwide. The new brand initiative—featuring high quality, multidisciplinary art programs and conferences focusing on art and culture as being essential to the future vitality of cities—was presented as biennial festival in New York City (2011, 2013, and 2015), and as global conferences in Istanbul (2012) and São Paulo (2013).
For IDEAS CITY, Erni created ground-breaking program concepts with over 150 events at each biennial; curated site-specific exhibitions, installations, performances, talks, panels, and think tanks; and secured key partnerships with cultural, civic, and government organizations. Signature projects included Flash:Light, Let Us Make Cake, the first commissioned artist projections mapping on the New Museum façade; A Performative Conference in Nine Acts, a night-long performance marathon at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, addressing gentrification; and After Hours: Murals on the Bowery, a collaboration with Art Production Fund, where international artists were invited to create paintings on the metal roller shutters of Bowery retail shops.
For the global curatorial platform ARTPORT_making waves, which Erni co-founded in 2006 and has remained co-director though 2016, she commissioned, curated, and produced public art projects, exhibitions, artist residencies, educational programs, and publications with a focus on art and climate change that bring together the arts, science, and politics. Key projects include ARTPORT_Satellite—artist interventions with George Steinmann, Barthélémy Toguo, and Olafur Eliasson at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, Paris, 2015; (Re-) Cycles of Paradise, a traveling exhibition on gender and climate change at United Nations Climate Change Conferences, Copenhagen and Mexico, and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), 2009-2012; and Cool Stories for When the Planet Gets Hot, a biennial competition for short art videos on global warming with screenings of finalists' editions and educational programs worldwide that began in 2009.
Earlier, Erni co-curated and produced three major contemporary arts and culture festivals in New York City: Extremely Hungary, European Dream and The Swiss Peaks Festival.
Presented by New York's Hungarian Cultural Center, Extremely Hungary, was a year-long contemporary Hungarian arts festival in 2009-2010 in New York and Washington, D.C. featuring more than 100 exhibitions, performances, and screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Hall, National Gallery of Art, and Library of Congress, among others.
In 2006, European Dream, presented a cutting-edge pan-European performing arts festival featuring dance, music, theater, film, and literary productions at 23 venues, including Danspace, DTW, The Kitchen, P.S.122, and Joe's Pub. The festival was launched by the Czech Center, French Institute/Alliance Française, Goethe-Institut, and the Italian Cultural Institute in New York on the occasion of Eastern European countries joining the European Union in 2006,
The Swiss Peaks Festival in 2003 was an award-winning festival featuring contemporary Swiss art, design, architecture, film, music, and education at 35 venues, including Cooper Union, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Van Alen Institute.
A native of Switzerland, Erni is fluent in six languages. She was educated in Milan and New York and began her career in fashion design in Switzerland and New York before turning her attention to interdisciplinary arts programming.
The Parrish Art Museum is devoted to illuminating the creative process and the ways art and artists transform our experiences and understanding of the world and how we live in it. The museum fosters connections among individuals, art, and artists through care and interpretation of its art collection, exhibitions, publications, educational initiatives, programs, and artists-in-residence. The Parrish is located at 279 Montauk Highway, Water Mill, NY 11976. www.parrishart.org.
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