Photo by Jon Chase/Harvard Staff Photographer

Dan Byers is a curator of contemporary art with a current focus on commissioning new work with living artists. In addition to leading the Carpenter Center’s program of exhibitions and events, he teaches curatorial studies in the Department of Art, Film, and Visual Studies. His upcoming projects at the Carpenter Center include projects with Deidrick Brackens and Katherine Bradford, Candice Lin, and B. Ingrid Olson. Recent exhibitions include Tony Cokes: If UR Reading This It’s 2 Late, Vol II (2020, with Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art in London and ARGOS in Brussels), Jonathan Berger: An Introduction to Nameless Love (2019, with PARTICIPANT, INC in New York), Anna Opperman: Drawings (2019), and Liz Magor: Blowout (2019, with the Renaissance Society at University of Chicago). Previously, he was Mannion Family Senior Curator at the ICA/Boston, where he organized solo exhibitions featuring Diane Simpson, Geoffrey Farmer, and Steve McQueen, and the group exhibitions The Artist’s Museum and the 2017 Foster Prize Exhibition. Before moving to Boston, Byers was Richard Armstrong Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Carnegie Museum of Art and co-curator, with Daniel Baumann and Tina Kukielski, of the 2013 Carnegie International. In addition to overseeing the Carnegie’s acquisitions of modern and contemporary art, he worked closely with artists Cathy Wilkes and Ragnar Kjartansson to present their first US solo museum exhibitions. Byers was Chair of the 2019 Curatorial Leadership Summit at the Armory Show and co-organizer (with Ruba Katrib) of Why New Forms, Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies 20^th anniversary conference. He serves on advisory boards at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, and the Print Center in Philadelphia.