Manuel Borja-Villel Wins CCS Bard’s Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard), in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, has named noted curator and art historian Manuel Borja-Villel the winner of the 2024 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence. The laurel has been given annually since 1998 to honor those who have brought “innovative thinking, bold vision, and dedicated service to advancing the field of exhibition-making” and is attended by a $25,000 prize. Borja-Villel led Madrid’s Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía for fifteen years, during which he transformed the institution from a largely regional museum to an internationally renowned contemporary art institution before beingforced outby a conservative government earlier this year.

While at the Reina Sofía, he gained areputationfor elevating the work of modern and contemporary Spanish artists both famous and unknown, and for promoting Latin American art. Hecocuratedthe São Paulo Bienal, which opened in September. “Manuel Borja-Villel embodies the critical role of curators today in challenging accepted modes of practice to facilitate meaningful and responsive discourse on visual culture, past and present,” said Tom Eccles, executive director of CCS Bard, in a statement.RelatedSTAFF AT BUFFALO AKG ART MUSEUM MOVE TO UNIONIZECATHERINE CHRISTER HENNIX (1948–2023) Alongside the Audrey Irmas Award, CCS Bard additionally announced Carla Acevedo-Yates, a 2014 graduate of the curatorial program, as the inaugural winner of the Scott Lorinsky Alumni Award.

Accompanied by a $10,000 prize, the honor is given in recognition of an “outstanding graduate for sustained innovation and engagement in exhibition-making, public education, research, and a commitment to the field.” The San Juan, Puerto Rico–born Acevedo-Yates is the Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where she conceived and helms the museum’s Hemispheric Initiative, which brings attention to Caribbean, Latinx, and Latin American art. Eccles in a statement noted that CCS Bard was pleased to “recognize the outstanding contributions of Carla Acevedo-Yates, whose curatorial career has brought visibility to overlooked artists across the Americas.” Borja-Villel and Acevedo-Yates will receive theirawardsat CCS Bard’s spring 2024 gala celebration and dinner on April 8, 2024, to be held in New York City at The Lighthouse at Pier 61..