The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, has announced Gridthiya Gaweewong as the winner of the 2025 Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence, for which the curator will receive $25,000 USD.
After working as an English teacher and librarian in a refugee camp in Phanat Nikhom, Thailand, Gridthiya Gaweewong obtained a Master of Arts in Administrations and Policy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. That same year, she cofounded the alternative art space Project 304 with Monthīan Bunmā, Kamol Phaosavasdi and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. In 2023, she was the Artistic Director of the Thailand Biennale in Chiang Rai alongside Rirkrit Tiravanija. Gaweewong is currently the Artistic Director of the Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, a Guest Curator at the MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum in Chiang Mai, as well as an independent curator.
‘Gridthiya’s curatorial approach, which subverts institutional narratives in lieu of artist-led and personal perspectives, embodies the innovative contributions to the curatorial field CCS Bard aims to recognize with this award,’ stated Tom Eccles, the Executive Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
The Audrey Irmas Award for Curatorial Excellence was founded in 1998 to recognise groundbreaking visionaries in the curatorial field. The winner is selected by an independent panel of leading contemporary art curators, museum directors, and artists. Past recipients of the Award include Manuel Borja-Villel (2024), Adriano Pedrosa (2023), Valerie Cassel Oliver (2022), Connie Butler (2020), Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (2019), Lia Gangitano (2018), Nicholas Serota (2017), Thelma Golden (2016), Christine Tohmé and Martha Wilson (2015), Charles Esche (2014), Elisabeth Sussman (2013), Ann Goldstein (2012), Helen Molesworth and Hans Ulrich Obrist (2011), Lucy Lippard (2010), Okwui Enwezor (2009), Catherine David (2008), Alanna Heiss (2007), Lynne Cooke and Vasif Kortun (2006), Kathy Halbreich and Mari Carmen Ramírez (2005), Walter Hopps (2004), Kynaston McShine (2003), Susanne Ghez (2002), Paul Schimmel (2001), Kasper König (2000), Marcia Tucker (1999), and Harald Szeemann (1998).
