Iria Candela and Beatrice Galilee Appointed to New Curatorships Endowed by Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky within Met’s Modern and Contemporary Art Department

Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announced today the two appointees who will inaugurate new curatorships within the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art. Both positions were established this spring through a generous gift from Daniel Brodsky, the Museum’s Chairman, and his wife Estrellita B. Brodsky, an art historian and specialist in Latin American art. 

Iria Candela will become the Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art in the fall, focusing on the art of 20th- and 21st-century Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and South America. AndBeatrice Galilee, the new Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, began working at the Museum in late April. Both will work closely with the modern and contemporary curatorial team, under the leadership of Sheena Wagstaff, the Museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art, on researching and developing the collection and devising the program for both the main building and the Marcel Breuer-designed building that the Met will occupy once the Whitney Museum moves downtown in 2015.

“We are grateful to Dan and Estrellita Brodsky for this new momentum in our modern and contemporary art program,” said Mr. Campbell. “Their vision and major support have made it possible for us to broaden our expertise significantly, bringing a truly global perspective to our work in this area.”

Sheena Wagstaff commented: “We are proud to welcome two new curators who are regarded with respect in their fields, and who view their specialty areas within the wider perspective of international contemporary practice. Iria Candela will occupy the department’s first curatorship with a regional specialty. She will contribute to the Met’s collection of art from Latin America and to the Met’s overall modern and contemporary program, while exploring trans-historic projects across the Met with other departments, such as the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas and the American Wing. Beatrice Galilee will reinvigorate the Met’s historic involvement with architecture and industrial design, and engage with issues around the built environment and expanded contemporary design; the Breuer project offers an iconic structure in which we can explore alternative approaches to this rich and rapidly growing field.”

Iria Candela

Iria Candela is currently Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, where she has worked with Tate’s Latin American Acquisitions Committee to acquire works of Latin American art for the collection. She is co-curator of the major traveling retrospective of Kazimir Malevich that will be presented at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in fall 2014. At Tate, she has worked on a retrospective of Mira Schendel (2013); the group exhibition No Lone Zone (2012), including Latin American artists Cinthia Marcelle, Teresa Margolles, and David Zink Yi, and the artists collective Tercerunquinto; the mid-career survey Gabriel Orozco (2011); and a solo project of emerging Uruguayan artist Alejandro Cesarco (2010). She also curated two group exhibitions in Spain: En Suspensión/In Suspension(2012) at the Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló, showcasing the work of Alexander Apóstol, Cinthia Marcelle, and Héctor Zamora and addressing construction ideals and realities in contemporary cities; and low key (2008) at the Fundación Botín in Santander, featuring work by emerging artists from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

Prior to her work at Tate Modern, which began as an Assistant Curator in 2009, she was a Curatorial Assistant at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and a Curatorial Researcher at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. She is the author of books and essays on modern and contemporary art, including the book Art in Latin America 1990-2010 (Tate Publishing, 2013), which examines the rich and varied production of 20 leading Latin American artists, including Doris Salcedo, Ernesto Neto, Francis Alÿs, Allora y Calzadilla, and Rivane Neuenschwander. 

Ms. Candela was born in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. She holds a M.A. in Modern Art and Critical Studies from Columbia University in New York and a Ph.D. in Art History and Theory from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She has been the recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Museum, Museo del Prado, and the Terra Foundation, among others. 

Beatrice Galilee

Beatrice Galilee is a curator, writer, critic, and lecturer. Most recently, she was chief curator of the 2013 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, Close, Closer, where she presented alternative realms of architectural and spatial practice. She was co-curator at the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale, Design is Design is Not Design, in South Korea, and the 2009 Shenzhen Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, City Urbanization, in China—both major city-wide exhibitions devoted to introducing new ideas and experiences to a broad public audience. She has curated a number of exhibitions and experimental design projects across Europe, and was the co-founder and director ofThe Gopher Hole, an exhibition and project space in London.

Educated in architecture at the University of Bath, with a M.Sc. in architectural history from the Bartlett School of Architecture, Ms. Galilee began her career as an editor at Icon magazine, and was a contributing editor to Domus magazine from 2010 to 2013. She is an associate lecturer in the spatial practices program at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She has written widely on contemporary architecture and design, has been invited to sit on a number of international juries, and is a regular speaker at events, symposia, and conferences.