Barbara Piwowarska, born in 1976 in Warsaw, is an independent curator and art historian. She specializes in the legacy of the avant-garde – its reception and reinterpretation, and in contemporary art. She was recipient of scholarships at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York (2001–2002) and Harvard University, Cambridge, Radcliffe Institute (2011). She is also a founding member of The Kosciuszko Foundation Alumni Association and Arton Foundation. Between 2007–2010 she worked at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (CCA), Warsaw in Film Form Archive department [the Archive of Polish Experimental Film]. In past years she curated and co-curated internationally, including: Polish New Wave at Tate Modern, London; Anthology Film Archives, New York and Arsenal Experimental, Berlin; Polish Socialist Conceptualism of the 70s at Orchard, New York; Film Matters at Beton7, Athens; or Die / Der Würfel / Le dé at COCO Kunstverein, Vienna. She is author of the monograph Jadwiga Maziarska. Atlas of the Imaginary (2009), and co-editor of two anthologies: Polish New Wave. The History of the Phenomenon That Never Existed (CCA Warsaw, 2008) and Star City. The Future under Communism (Nottingham Contemporary, 2011). Since 2010 she runs the Footnote project employing ‘methodology of margins’, referencing existing concepts and institutions in format of exhibitions and interventions: Footnote 1. Phantom Limb at CCA, Warsaw; Footnote 2. Correction at Silberkuppe, Berlin; Footnote 3. Andrea Fraser at Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; Footnote 4. Disambiguation in Format P; Footnote 5. Screening Space at MUMOK, Vienna; Footnote 6. As Model at Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York; Footnote 7. Barburka at Teatr Rozmaitości (TR Warszawa). Between 2011–2015 she curated and co-curated: Erna Rosenstein. I Can Repeat Only Unconsciously at the Foksal Gallery Foundation and Avant-Garde Institute (Henryk Stażewski/Edward Krasiński Studio); parallel exhibition The Third Room at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw; Jadwiga Maziarska 1913-2003 at Johnen Galerie in Berlin; Zofia and Oskar Hansen. Private Spaces at Arton Foundation in Warsaw; Erna Rosenstein. Organism at Art Stations Foundation by Grażyna Kulczyk in Poznań; Erna Rosenstein. Superimposition at Xawery Dunikowski Sculpture Museum in Królikarnia/National Museum in Warsaw; or Stefka Ammon. Double Bind and Christina Dimitriadis: Technologies of the Self at Studio Gallery in Warsaw. In 2016 Barbara was in the jury of Celeste Prize 2016.
Publications: In 2014 she co-authored (together with Dorota Jarecka) a book on Erna Rosenstein, published by the Foksal Gallery Foundation. Currently she is working on a book devoted to affinities Oskar Hansen’s Open Form and Joseph Beuys’s Social Sculpture (to be published by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw). Barbara frequently writes for ArtReview magazine (London), and previously contributed to Art in America (New York), Bidoun (London/New York), Spike Magazine (Vienna), Art Margins/MIT (Cambridge, MA), Praesens: Central European Art Review (Budapest), Nowy Dziennik (New York), Format P (Warsaw), Obieg (Warsaw), Opcje (Katowice), and others.

https://www.celesteprize.com/barbarapiwowarska