New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has appointed art historian and curator Duygu Demir to the post of Curator of the university’s Art Gallery, and Research Assistant Professor of Art History. Originally from Turkey, Demir is a founding member of SALT, a research-based cultural institution in Istanbul. Before joining NYUAD, Demir was Assistant Art History Professor at Sabancı University.
As the NYUAD Art Gallery enters its 10th year of exhibitions and publications, Demir’s appointment is intended to advance the gallery’s commitment to using exhibition-making as a mode of investigation, supporting experimentation in form and concept, and charting new areas of art history.
In keeping with the NYUAD Art Gallery’s mission as a teaching institution and a core catalyst for NYU Abu Dhabi as a locus of intellectual and creative activity, Demir will also support the university’s Arts and Humanities division as a Research Assistant Professor. Her academic research topics include non-Western modernisms, exhibition histories, transnational artistic encounters, and moments of confluence between art and architecture. Her academic writing has appeared in MIT Press’s Art Margins (2014) and Thresholds (2018), as well as Art Journal (2019).
Demir’s most recent curatorial project is a survey of art from Turkey made in the last decade, currently on view at İMALAT-HANE in Bursa. Last year, she worked on solo presentations of work by Deniz Aktaş and Gözde İlkin, both for artSümer in Istanbul (2022). While at SALT, she co-curated several critically acclaimed solo and group exhibitions and accompanying public programs, and edited two monographic publications: one on conceptualist İsmail Saray (2018) and another for Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin (2011). In addition to numerous exhibition catalogue contributions, she was one of the authors of Art Cities of the Future: Avant-Gardes of the 21st Century (Phaidon, 2013), a nominator and contributor for Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing (Phaidon, 2013), as well as the editor of Room of Rhythms–Cevdet Erek (Walther König, 2012).
To learn more, visit nyuad.nyu.edu.
