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 Turkey, she was a founding member of SALT, a cultural institution in Istanbul. She earned her PhD from MIT, with funding from both MIT and Harvard University. Prior to joining NYUAD, Demir was Assistant Professor of Art History at Sabancı University.
The Art Gallery Executive Director and University Chief Curator Maya Allison said in a statement: “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 that grows in its reputation as a nourishing and welcoming place for artists to develop their practice. What does it mean to be growing a major cultural sector, rooted in this region? Our university’s role in exploring that question has crystallized: in our Art Gallery, in our more free-form Project Space, and in our Reading Room, NYU Abu Dhabi supports creative experimentation and the development of new bodies of knowledge. Duygu 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 programs, which she did for many years even before proceeding to her PhD.
