IMMA is delighted to announce the acquisition of the Paul O’Neill Archive to the IMMA Permanent Collection. Paul O’Neill is an Irish artist and curator based in Helsinki where he is Director of the curatorial agency PUBLICS. The Paul O’Neill Archive comprises a large body of material spanning several decades of Paul’s work across the globe as an artist, curator, educator, researcher and writer, including publications, research and teaching material, exhibition and project ephemera and art works. This Archive will be an invaluable resource for students, researchers, artists and curators and anyone with an interest in contemporary international curatorial theory and practice. IMMA is endeavouring to create on site and online platforms to access material in the Archive from the outset.

Curious – Paul O’Neill & Gerrie van Noord eds. Product Type: Art, Literature & Critical Theory Published by Open Editions, Softcover, 190 pages, 160 x 210 mm ISBN 9780949004208

Curious presents a series of in depth, in-person interviews with curators and artists by Paul O’Neill, conducted at the turn of the millennium when contemporary art curating was solidifying as a creative profession. In looking backwards to retrieve these personal histories, a complex picture emerges; one in which the recent past adeptly illuminates the present, as well as the potential of future curatorial trajectories. While much of the existing history of curating focuses on career milestones, educational paths, and exhibition networks, this collection offers personal reflections that reveal the dynamics of this transformative period. O’Neill uncovers a variety of insightful responses, creating a nuanced picture of the past that sheds light on present curatorial practices and future possibilities. With contributions by Brian O’Doherty, Lawrence Weiner, Seth Siegelaub, AA Bronson, Lynda Morris, Brian Wallis, Andrea Fraser, Okwui Enwezor, Has Ulrich Obrist, Hou Hanru, Gilane Tawadros, Nicolas Bourriaud, Ute Meta Bauer and Maria Lind.

Price: € 25 / Available from the IMMA Shop and all good bookshops. Copies will be available for purchase on the evening.

Paul O’Neill
Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, and educator. Paul O’Neill is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, since September 2017. PUBLICS is a curatorial agency, contemporary art commissioner, event and exhibition space with a dedicated library and reading room in Helsinki. Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York where he also curated We are the Center for Curatorial Studies, at Hessel Museum, (2016-17) and The Visitor Talks Programme (2013-17). More details here

O’Neill is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) (MIT Press, 2012), which has been translated into many languages. Paul has co-curated over 70 shows across the including: 24 Hour Tony Cokes, Amos Rex, Helsinki (2025); the year-long Coalescence Happenstance with All Due Intent, Shimmer Rotterdam (2024-25); Coalesce Sometime Later, The Showroom, London (2024); ADN Platform, Barcelona (2023); and an on-going series of COUPLING shows at PUBLICS.

O’Neill is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, educators and scholar of curatorial practice, public art, and exhibition histories, and has authored and co-edited numerous agenda-setting anthologies on curating. Most recent co-edited books are: Not Going it Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (apexart, New York, 2024), and CURIOUS (Open Editions, London, 2024) co-edited with Gerrie van Noord.

He is editor of the curatorial anthology Curating Subjects (2007), and co-editor of Curating and the Educational Turn (2010), and Curating Research (2014) both with Mick Wilson and published by de Appel and Open Editions (Amsterdam and London). Paul is author of Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art (Amsterdam, Valiz, 2011), co-edited with Claire Doherty and author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2012). Paul is responsible for the agenda-setting series of three curatorial anthologies, The Curatorial Conundrum, How Institutions Think, and Curating After the Global: Roadmaps to the Present, co-edited with Lucy Steeds, Mick Wilson and Simon Sheikh (MIT Press, CCS Bard College and LUMA Foundation, 2016, 2017 and 2019 respectively).

Since 2017 O’Neill has been a visiting professor in MA Curating at the Latvian Academy of Fine Arts. Between 2005 to 2017, O’Neill was a visiting international tutor at de Appel Amsterdam. He was an international research fellow with The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin in 2010-2013. From 2007 until 2010, O’Neill led the major international research programme Locating the Producers, at Situations, University of the West of England, Bristol. He has previously held lecturing positions on the MFA in Curating, Goldsmiths University of London and in Visual Culture, Middlesex University, where he received his PhD in 2007. Between 2001 and 2004 he was the Curator of London Print Studio Gallery. From 1997 to 2006 he was Artistic Director of Multiples X, an organisation that commissioned and supported curated exhibitions of artist’s editions.

O’Neill has recently published three artists’ books as author, co-editor: Maryam Jafri: Independence Days (Walther König, 2022), Kathrin Bohm: Art on the Scale of Life (Sternberg, 2023), and Dave McKenzie Banners and Letters (Rooftop Press, 2023). Paul is currently working on two new publications of his curatorial texts called Flip-Flopping Beyond Care Towards Para-hosting and CURED planned for publication later this year.

Gerrie van Noord
Dr Gerrie van Noord is a curator of publications and an educator who teaches on the MA Curating Contemporary Art MA at the Royal College of Art (since 2019). She is particularly interested in the potential of publishing as an arena of artistic as well as curatorial practice, and collaborative ways of working. She has a longstanding working relationship with Paul O’Neill, where most recently they collaborated on Curious and Not Going It Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating. Other projects include the production of the critical anthologies Curating after the Global: Roadmaps for the Present (2019), How Institutions Think: Between Contemporary Art and Curatorial Discourse (2017) and The Curatorial Conundrum: What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice (2016). She also co-edited Kathrin Böhm: Art on the Scale of Life (with Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson, 2023), produced Between the Material and the Possible (ed. Bassam El Baroni, 2022), worked with Olivia Pender on a website (2021) and the book Rise Early, Be Industrious (2016) and edited Curling Up with Reality (2021), a selection of Isabel Nolan’s writing. For Book Works, she commissioned and produced the Fabrications series and for Artangel a range of their Afterlives publications.