Charles Esche

Charles Esche (born 1962, England) is a curator and writer. Since 2004, he has been Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. He is co-founder and co-editor of Afterall Journal and Afterall Books with Mark Lewis. Afterall is a contemporary art publication which was first launched in 1998 and is based at Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London.

He is a theoretical advisor at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam and visiting professor at NABA, Milano. In 2010, he curated U#, the Slovenian Triennale in Ljubljana. In 2009 and 2007 he was co-curator with Khalil Rabah of the 2nd RIWAQ Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine. In 2005 he was co-curator of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial with Vasif Kortun[1] and in 2002 the co-curator with Hou Hanru and Song Wan Kyung of the Gwangju Biennale[2], Republic of Korea. Between 2000 and 2004 he was the Director of Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Malmo, Sweden.

His main work has involved working on the constitution of art institutions, most recently the museum but also the qualities of the art centre or biennial. His writings on institutional possibility and policy are useful aids to rethinking the relation between art and social change. A valuable book is the reader Art and Social Change published by Afterall and Tate Publishing and co-edited by Esche and Will Bradley. He also co-edited a reader called The Netherlands, for example with Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova for the 2007 Venice Biennale. He has written for many art catalogues and magazines and a selection of his texts was published in 2005 under the title Modest Proposals by Baglam Press, Istanbul in Turkish and English, edited by Serkan Ozkaya.

External links

• http://www.afterall.org/
• http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl
• http://www.neme.org/184/charles-esche
• http://www.iksv.org/bienal/bienal9/english/?Page=Curators
• http://www.republicart.net/disc/institution/esche01_en.htm
• http://www.nrc.nl/opinie/article2275391.ece/Kunst_en_de_Thorbecke-paradox

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Name	Esche, Charles
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Date of birth	1962
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