Paul O’Neill

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer and educator. He is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, a position he took up in September 2017. www.publics.fi

PUBLICS is a curatorial agency and event space with a dedicated library, and reading room in Helsinki. Between 2013-17, Paul was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York. He is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, MASS., The MIT Press, 2012), which has been translated into many languages.

Paul is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, and leading scholar of curatorial practice, public art and exhibition histories. Paul has held numerous curatorial and research positions over the last twenty years and he has taught on many curatorial and visual arts programs in Europe, The USA, Asia and the UK. Paul has co-curated more than sixty curatorial projects across the world including amongst others the exhibition:  We are the (Epi)center, P! Gallery, New York (2016), and the muti-faceted We are the Center for Curatorial Studies for the Hessel Museum, Bard College (2016-17). When at CCS Bard College, Paul also curated the four-year public program The Visitor Talks, and three large-scale international symposia The Future Curatorial Whatnot and Study What Conundruum (CCS Bard, 2015); How Institutions Think, and Curating After the Global at the LUMA Foundation, Arles in 2016, and 2017 with situated commissions by artists Céline Condorelli, and Emmanuelle Lainé.

Paul’s writing has been published in many books, catalogues, journals and magazines, and is reviews editor for Art and the Public Sphere Journal and on the editorial boards of The Journal of Curatorial Studies, and FIELD – A Journal of Socially Engaged Art Criticism. Paul is editor of the curatorial anthology, Curating Subjects (2007), and co-editor of Curating and the Educational Turn  (2010), and Curating Research (2014) with Mick Wilson, de Appel and Open Editions (Amsterdam and London). He is author of Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art (Amsterdam, Valiz, 2011), co-edited with Claire Doherty and author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, MASS., The MIT Press, 2012). He is coeditor of a series of three recent curatorial anthologies, The Curatorial Conundrum; How Institutions Think, and Curating After the Global: Roadmaps to the Present, with Lucy Steeds, Mick Wilson et al, and published with The MIT Press, CCS Bard College and Luma Foundation, in 2016, 2017 and 2019 respectively. Paul is currently working on two new books.