I am pleased to share the news that Celine Wong Katzman has been promoted to Curator at Rhizome. In this role, Celine will be managing the incoming Program Assistant, and will be responsible for many of our artist commissions, ArtBase accessions, related editorial content, and other key programs.
This promotion comes at an exciting time for Rhizome, as we build much-needed organizational capacity, adding several new staff members, including Makayla Bailey, Rhizome’s new Development Director and two positions still in recruitment: a Community Designer and a Program Assistant.
Celine has worked with Rhizome in different capacities since 2015, first joining for a fellowship focused on editorial and event support. Over the years, she has continued to contribute to the blog and worked with Rhizome as an independent editor for the publication of The Art Happens Here and for the recent relaunch of the ArtBase. Since joining Rhizome as Web Manager in March 2021, Celine has made significant contributions to Rhizome's program:
- She organized “Geek Camp,” a “feral media lab” conceived by artist Shu Lea Cheang, inviting six artists to camp for several days together in upstate New York. Working through incredibly complex conditions, Celine successfully supported newly commissioned works by each artist, which are on view in an evocative exhibition, Wet Networks, on view at the Queens Museum through August 14, 2022.
- Celine acts as mentor for the 2021-22 Art & Code track participants at NEW INC, the “museum-led incubator” that Rhizome has been a part of since its founding.
- Celine co-curated Shirley Sound, a newly commissioned video installation by Ryan Clarke that premiered at the Boiler Room festival in New York in September 2021.
- She also ran a successful open call around the theme Executable Poetry that led to the first large-scale accession of artworks to the Rhizome ArtBase in several years.
Celine is also well known to many in the Rhizome community for her work as a teacher and co-director at the School for Poetic Computation, where she has played an important role in rethinking the school as a cooperative structure and developing equitable labor practices to support the study of computation, art, and critical theory. She contributed to Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts, and acted as co-editor of consider the scallion, a risograph anthology bringing together reflections on the eponymous allium. Previously, she was a NYSCA Curatorial Fellow at the Queens Museum and a gallery assistant at bitforms gallery.
Please join me in welcoming Celine to her new role!