Cooke, Lynne 1952-

PERSONAL:

Born 1952. Education: Melbourne University, B.A.; Courtauld Institute of Art, M.A.; London University, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Office—Dia Art Foundation, 535 W. 22nd St., New York, NY 10011. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University College, London, England, art history lecturer, 1979-1989; joint curator at Venice Biennale, 1986, and Carnegie International, 1991; Dia Art Foundation, New York, NY, curator, 1991—. Has also taught at Syracuse University, NY, 1987, and Graduate Sculpture School, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1990, 1992, 1998; artistic director, Sidney Biennial, Australia, 1996. Curator of exhibitions at various museums, including the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Hayward Gallery, London, England; Third Eye Center, Glasgow, Scotland; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; and American Center, Paris, France.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Award for Curatorial Excellence, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, 2006.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Author of text, with Anne Rorimer and Selma Klein Essink) Allan McCollum: Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 16.9-12.11, 1989; Serpentine Gallery, London, 21.3-29.4, 1990; IVAM Centre Del Carme, Valencia, 22.5-29.7, 1990, El Centre (Valencia, Spain), 1989.

(Author of text, with Helmut Friedel) Ian McKeever: A History of Rocks, 1986-1988, Kunstforum (Munich, Germany), 1990.

(Compiler and author of text, with others) Doubletake: Collective Memory & Current Art: Hayward Galley, London, 20 February-20 April 1992, South Bank Centre/Parkett (London, England), 1992.

Gary Hill (exhibit catalog), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), 1993.

(Coauthor) Julian Opie, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1994.

(Editor, with Karen Kelly) Arena: Where Would I Have Got If I Had Been Intelligent!, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1994.

(Editor, with Silvia Eiblmayr) Original: Symposium, Salzburger Kunstverein, Cantz (Ostfildern, Germany), 1995.

Ann Hamilton (exhibit catalog), Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1995.

(Editor, with Barry Schwabsky and Lynne Tillman) Jessica Stockholder, Phaidon (London, England), 1995.

(With André Magnin) Worlds Envisioned: Alighiero e Boetti and Frederic Bruly Bouabre, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1995.

Rebecca Horn (exhibit catalog), Kestner Gesellschaft (Hannover, Germany), 1997.

Richard Serra (exhibit catalog), Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Peter Wollen) Visual Display: Culture beyond Appearances, New Press (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor, with Karen Kelly) Joseph Beuys: Drawings after the Codices Madrid of Leonardo Da Vinci, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1998.

(With Isaac Julien and Sam Shepard) Tracey Moffatt: Free-Falling, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1998.

(Author of text) Juan Muñoz, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 1999.

Louise Bourgeois (exhibit catalog), Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), 1999.

Roni Horn (exhibit catalog), Phaidon (London, England), 2000.

(With others) Thomas Schuette, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 2001.

(With John Elderfeld) Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 2001.

(Editor, with Karen Kelly) Diana Thater: Knots + Surfaces, Dia Center for the Arts (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Michael Govan) Dia: Beacon, Dia Art Foundation (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor, with Karen Kelly and Bettina Funcke) Robert Whitman: Playback, Dia Art Foundation (New York, NY), 2003.

(Editor, with Karen Kelly, Bettina Funcke and Barbara Schröder) Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities, University of California Press/Dia Art Foundation (Berkeley, CA), 2005.

(With Kynaston McShine) Richard Serra: Sculpture: Forty Years, Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), 2007.

(With Kenneth Baker) Walter De Maria: The Lightning Field, Dia Art Foundation (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to Sean Scully, Twenty Years, 1976-1995, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1995. Contributor to periodicals, including Burlington Magazine and Parkett.

SIDELIGHTS:

Lynne Cooke is an art curator who has a reputation for excellence on several continents. She has been the curator of the Dia Art Foundation in New York City since 1991, was cocurator of the Venice Biennale in Italy in 1986, and was artistic director of the biennial celebration in Sydney, Australia, in 1996. She has served as curator for exhibitions around the world and has written and edited the text for many exhibition catalogs, as well as other monographs, articles, and books on contemporary art.

Cooke and Peter Wollen edited the 1995 publication Visual Display: Culture beyond Appearances. It is a collection of thirteen essays that were featured at a conference on visual culture at the Dia Center for the Arts. According to Michael Gardiner's review in the Journal of Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thoughts, the book "can best be understood as an intervention in this contemporary debate over the meaning of ocularcentrism in contemporary society and its implications for political activity, culture, human subjectivity, and theoretical practice." Contributors include Marina Warner, Peter Wollen, and Susan Buck-Morss. Along with the other contributors, they "deal with an attractively eclectic variety of topics, ranging from the 17th-century cabinet of curiosities to ultrasound technology and the history of wax museums," noted Gardiner. "The contributions are also unabashedly interdisciplinary, drawing freely from such approaches as semiotics, postmodernism, hermeneutics, Lacanian psychoanalysis, the new cultural history, and many others." He concluded that Visual Display is "a highly entertaining and accessible yet sophisticated compilation that manages to keep the usual flurry of neologisms down to a tolerable minimum," one that "has much to offer anyone interested in current developments in social thought, cultural and media studies, and postmodernism."

Cooke's contribution to Jessica Stockholder is "perspicuous," according to Ken Johnson in Art in America. The book is part of a series published by Phaidon that is devoted to contemporary artists. The series, as a whole, has produced "startlingly good books," according to David Carrier in Artforum International. "Each volume has a lucid survey essay, a well-edited artist interview, a discussion of a single work, and the artist's selection of a text relevant to his or her work." Carrier concluded that the series "will revolutionize the way contemporary art is presented and written about."

In Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities, Cooke and coeditor Karen Kelly compiled photographs and essays related to Spiral Jetty, a huge earth-and-basalt construction in Utah that was completed by artist Robert Smithson in 1970. Robert Smithson reaches from the shore of Great Salt Lake out into the waters of the lake. For many years it was mostly submerged, but in 2002 drought conditions caused the work to emerge from the water, encrusted with crystals of salt from the lake. Smithson's work also includes a short film and a poetic essay.

Cooke's book examines earthwork, film, and essay, with essays that discuss the components of the work, "correcting the view that Smithson's essay and film might be seen only as supporting documentation to the earthwork," commented a reviewer for the Art Libraries Society of North America Web site. Cooke herself contributed an overview and history of Smithson's career; other texts include an interview with Smithson, conducted by art critic Kenneth Baker, and the transcription of a lecture, originally given by artist Diana Thater on the Spiral Jetty film. "Like many iconic works associated with the Minimalist art movement, [Spiral Jetty's] simplicity is deceptive," said a Publishers Weekly reviewer." There's a lot of theory under all those rocks." The book brings the work to life, particularly with its "stunning" photographs, according to the reviewer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Afterimage, November 1, 1996, Kenneth L. Ames, review of Visual Display: Culture beyond Appearances, p. 14.

Architects' Journal, November 10, 2005, review of Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty: True Fictions, False Realities, p. 53.

Artforum International, November, 1995, David Carrier, review of Jessica Stockholder, p. S22.

Art History, September, 1996, Brendan Prendeville, review of Jessica Stockholder, p. 454.

Art in America, January, 1996, Ken Johnson, review of Jessica Stockholder, p. 33; March, 2006, "Lynne Cooke, Curator of the Dia Art Foundation, and Vasif Kortun, Curator of Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center in Istanbul, Are Winners of the 2006 Award for Curatorial Excellence," p. 182.

Art Libraries Society of North America, Volume 25, issue 1, 2006, review of Robert Smithson.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, January, 2006, J.A. Nodine, review of Robert Smithson, p. 841.

Library Journal, July, 1995, Russell T. Clement, review of Visual Display, p. 79; September 1, 2007, Jack Perry Brown, review of Richard Serra: Sculpture: Forty Years, p. 134.

New Yorker, October 8, 2001, review of Bridget Riley: Reconnaissance, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, August 15, 2005, review of Robert Smithson, p. 54.

Sight and Sound, February, 1996, review of Visual Display, p. 33.

ONLINE

A-lef Web site,http://www.a-lef.org (February 3, 2008), author profile.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts Web site,http://www.smfa.edu/ (February 3, 2008), author profile.

Friends of the High Line Web site,http://www.thehighline.org/ (February 3, 2008), author profile.

Fundació Antoni Tàpies Web site,http://www.funaciotapies.org/ (February 3, 2008), author profile.

Journal of Canadian Society for Hermeneutics and Postmodern Thoughts,http://www.ualberta.ca/~di/csh/ (February 3, 2008), Michael Gardiner, review of Visual Display.

Ohio State University, Department of Art Visitors Series Web site,http://aremergency.org/ (February 3, 2008), author profile.