Hosted by Steven Henry Madoff, Founding Chair of the MA Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
The Curatorial Roundtable, an international forum for curators and institutional leaders to discuss formative and current projects, is hosted by Steven Henry Madoff, Founding Chair of the MA Curatorial Practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.
Francesco Urbano Ragazzi is a curatorial duo founded in Paris in 2008 by Francesco Ragazzi (International Ph.D. in Philosophy, professor of Aesthetics) and Francesco Urbano (Ph.D. in Film & Media Studies). Their practice aims to reconnect art with everyday contexts through exhibition formats that take place not only within galleries and museums but also across public spaces and spaces shaped by the free market. Their approach is exemplified by a trilogy of exhibitions curated in Venice on the occasion of the Visual Arts Biennale: The Internet Saga by Jonas Mekas (2015); Hillary: The Hillary Clinton Emails by Kenneth Goldsmith, with the participation of Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton (2019); and Adoration by Pauline Curnier Jardin and the inmates of the Giudecca detention house (2022). The duo has also developed projects for major institutions worldwide, including the MMCA (Seoul), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), ISCP (New York), CERN (Geneva), Bucharest Biennale, Maraya Art Centre (Sharjah), Centro Ricerca Castello di Rivoli (Turin), Reykjavik International Film Festival, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, La Loge (Brussels), La Casa Encendida (Madrid), Institut Français (Paris), Ikon (Birmingham), Futura (Prague), Ruya Foundation (Baghdad), and Emirates Foundation (Abu Dhabi). In 2021, they co-edited FUORI!!! 1971-1974, an award-winning anthology dedicated to the first LGBTQ+ magazine in Italian history. Between 2021 and 2022, they directed the 17th LIAF Biennial in Norway. Between 2023 and 2024, they curated Jonas Mekas 100! in Italy, the international program celebrating the centenary of the legendary filmmaker—with whom they had long collaborated. In 2025, Francesco Urbano Ragazzi was named the first Italian Curatorial Fellow at the American Academy in Rome.
For this presentation in the Curatorial Roundtable, the duo will discuss their curatorial practice, which tests the boundaries of art in everyday contexts. Drawing on their almost twenty years of joint activity, the duo demonstrates how exhibitions can extend beyond traditional galleries and museums into public and capitalism-shaped spaces. Highlighting their trilogy of Venice exhibitions, they will propose how collaborative, site-specific, and socially engaged approaches can challenge conventional notions of audience, authorship, and institutional frameworks. Their talk also reflects on international projects and publications, from biennials to anthologies on LGBTQ+ history, offering insights into a curatorial methodology that is both conceptually rigorous and radically open to the many glitches of reality.
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