Clara Hargittay [biography]
Nuit Blanche Vision:
"To work in Queen Street West, this incredibly vibrant art strip with an attitude, is a huge challenge.
With the selected artists I hope to embark on a journey of discovery, one that under the protective veil
of the night sky will peal away layers of history, from the region's historic aboriginal past to the
present, and make visible the obscured and forgotten. "
Biography
Clara Hargittay is an independent curator and art consultant. She has been professionally involved
in the arts in Canada since the 1980s in a variety of positions, as an art writer and editor, curator
and art historical researcher, festival director and arts programmer. A graduate of the University of
Toronto in Fine Art History, her special interest and expertise are Canadian and international contemporary
art, Central and Eastern European art and contemporary First Nations art in North America.
Over the years Clara Hargittay's career has had many high points. After several years as editor of artmagazine,
a leading national visual arts review, she joined the Art Gallery of Ontario as writer and editor of AGO News,
and in 1989 she's won the support of the institution for a major international contemporary exhibition
initiative. She was co-curator with Dr. Roald Nasgaard of the exhibition, Free Worlds: Metaphors and Realities in Contemporary Hungarian Art, which
opened at the AGO in the fall of 1991 and traveled in North America. Clara Hargittay also initiated and
was director of a Toronto-wide multidisciplinary arts festival that featured contemporary Hungarian art
and culture in a broad context, with the aim to make Canadian audiences aware of the intellectual forces
behind the tremendous social and political changes in Central and Eastern Europe at the time.
Hungary Reborn: A Festival of the Artswas organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario
and the Hungarian Festival of the Arts Foundation and represented a unique collaboration between the
AGO and such leading arts organizations in Toronto as Harbourfront, Roy Thomson Hall, Music Toronto,
the Toronto Symphony, O'Keefe Centre, and New Music Concerts, among others. In addition to the
exhibition of Hungarian contemporary art, featured presentations included an exhibition of artists' videos;
a lecture series; a retrospective of Hungarian cinema and film symposium; appearances by the National
Ballet of Hungary, the Hungarian State Symphony, The Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra; architectural and
craft exhibitions; readings by Hungarian authors at the International Authors' Festival at Harbourfront;
and numerous complementary community based events.
The Hungary Reborn arts festival, of which the Free Worlds exhibition
was the central part, was the first major cultural event in North America that explored the reality of
the New World Order after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also the first international arts festival
in Toronto that was developed and presented not as a public relations initiative by a foreign government,
but through grass roots efforts and broad participation of an ex-patriot Hungarian community.
Since 1992, Clara Hargittay has been working as an independent curator and cultural consultant, and
has been involved with many exciting projects, often in highly creative and challenging roles. In the
late 1990s she traveled to Havana to research and to develop a multidisciplinary Cuban arts project commissioned
by the National Arts Centre, Ottawa, and worked as an arts and entertainment programming consultant at
the Living Arts Centre Mississauga, where she focused her efforts on building connections to Mississauga's
diverse communities. In 2003 she curated the exhibition The Political is Personal: A First Nations Perspectivefor
the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts at the Lieutenant Governor's suite in Queen's Park.
The exhibition brought together poignant and challenging work by many of Canada's leading First Nations
artists, among them Robert Houle, Rebecca Belmore, Carl Beam, Greg Staats, and Jeffrey Thomas. Clara
Hargittay is a research associate of the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, the web based Canadian
Art Database project (ccca.ca).
Over the span of her career Clara Hargittay developed considerable expertise not only in arts programming,
but also in project development and project management. From its inception, she worked as a cultural
consultant with the Toronto International Art Fair (2000 and 2001) organizing featured exhibitions and
educational programs. In the spring of 2005 she was invited by the organizers of TIAF to curate an exhibition
of installation art for the public spaces of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre during the Art Fair
in November, 3 - 7, 2005. Recognizing the potential of the occasion and the suitability of the venue
for a free public presentation of participatory media art, she invited Thom Sokoloski, a well known creator
of imaginative opera and multi media theatrical productions to collaborate on the project. Clara Hargittay
was Curatorial Director of INTERACTIVE 2005, the resulting unique collaborative
project that brought together an impressive consortium of partners including artists, artists run organizations
and galleries, all outstanding creators and promoters of interactive art, from Montreal and Toronto.
In the spring of 2006 Clara Hargittay was chosen as one of the curators of Nuit Blanche, responsible
for eight commissions, projects and installations for Zone 'C' in the Queen Street West Art and
Design district.
Toronto
August 2006
|
