Charlotte Cotton Joins ICP as First Curator in Residence for 250 Bowery

Photography writer and curator Charlotte Cotton has joined the International Center of Photography (ICP) as Curator in Residence for ICP’s new museum and events space, 250 Bowery.

Building on ICP’s nearly 50-year commitment as a forum for the most pressing issues within photographic culture, 250 Bowery will open in summer 2016. Its program of exhibitions and live and online events will make a series of timely and intelligent propositions about the impact of image culture on our lives. The new Curator in Residence program is a partnership between ICP and curatorial leaders who are contracted to shape and present exhibitions and programming on a rotational basis.

"This is a key moment in the story of ICP, in an era when images are more central than ever to both global communication and individual expression. Our new 250 Bowery space creates a critical and open platform for us to explore the important questions relating to image-making, which is at the core of our historical and ongoing vision for ICP," said Mark Lubell, Executive Director, ICP. "Launching our new Curator in Residence program with Charlotte is the first major step toward a new programmatic structure that will define ICP's leading-edge future. This new model for how ICP communicates and engages with the rapidly changing landscape of visual culture in the 21st century will be groundbreaking, and this approach will be an influential chapter in the story of contemporary culture."

At 250 Bowery, ICP will curate the pervasive and emergent themes in the field of photography and explore how images are catalysts for wide-reaching social change. Through its adaptable street-level spaces and its galleries, 250 Bowery is designed specifically to accommodate an expanded slate of creative events and installations, working in partnership with artists, technologists, thinkers, and ICP members.

"Our program will offer open access to new knowledge and a place where meaningful and thought-provoking experiences take place. It will be an exciting cultural space where ideas, skills, and diverse points of view are exchanged, and will be at the center of relevant discussion about images and their impact," said Cotton. "ICP's 250 Bowery will provide a public platform for the most prescient proposals about photography that connect artistic, professional, and common practices, as well as pinpoint the photographic precedents that we find in the rich history of the medium. The program is being devised in partnership with local and international research cultures, innovative artists, and independent groups and societies. Collectively, we will create an ongoing record of the substantive ideas that shape image-making culture today."

Cotton has held positions including Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at LACMA. She has been a Visiting Scholar and Critic at Parsons, The New School for Design in New York, Yale University, and CCA in San Francisco, among others. She is the author of The Photograph as Contemporary Art, and her new book Photography is Magic was released September 4, 2015.

The ICP School remains at the Midtown campus, and throughout the year, ICP will continue to offer classes, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, community programs, and more. Mana Contemporary, a 15,000-square-foot space in Jersey City, NJ, houses ICP’s Collections, a media lab, areas for research, and a gallery.