Piotr Piotrowski
Born 1952. Lives in Poznan. He received his MA and PhD from Adam Mickiewicz University and is currently professor ordinarius (the highest academic title in Poland, awarded exclusively by the President of the Republic of Poland) of modern art history and the chair of Art History Department of his alma mater. He is a sought after speaker and his lectures at the University are said to be tightly packed due to his "colorful style." Between 1992 and 1997 he was also a senior curator of contemporary art at the National Museum in Poznan. His allegiance to cutting-edge work is apparent in the selection of artists he chose to exhibit at the National Museum, or to whose catalogues he contributed. Among his favorites are the performance artist Jerzy Bere?; the Pozna? conceptualist Jaros?aw Kozlowski; and an author of intricate, large-scale, politically and socially charged photographic collages, Zofia Kulik. Piotrowski’s intimate familiarity with work by Central and Eastern European artists has led to multiple essays on the art of the region which have accompanied exhibition catalogues: Central European Avant-gardes: Exchange and Transformation, 1910-1930 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Beyond Belief: Contemporary Art from East Central Europe (MCA, Chicago), Der Riss im Raum (Bonn Kunsthalle, Zach?ta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw), and After the Wall: Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe (Moderna Museet, Stockholm), to name just the most important ones. Piotrowski also wrote an essay "Central Europe in the Face of Unification"(2) for an anthology Who If Not We Should At Least Try to Imagine the Future of All This?, which documented seven exhibitions organized on the occasion of the expansion of European Union in 2004. His curatorial activity is complementary to his academic writing. Citing Jean-Marc Poinsot, Piotrowski claims that "to organize an exhibition is to write the history of art."
