As Russia’s power in the contemporary art world rises, it is beginning to draw curatorial talent from around the world. In the latest example, the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture in Moscow, a nonprofit art center opened in 2008 by the heiress and collector Dasha Zhukova, has chosen Kate Fowle, a British-born curator who has been working for many years in New York, to be its new chief curator.
Since 2009, Ms. Fowle has been the executive director of Independent Curators International, a New York nonprofit organization, founded in 1975, that trains curators and helps them organize traveling exhibitions. Before that, she served as a curator at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. Ms. Fowle will continue to serve as director at large of the New York organization, whose profile has risen over the last several years along with the international demand for roving curators.
The Garage, first located in a Constructivist-era landmark bus garage near the Olympic Stadium in Moscow, is awaiting a move next year to a new home, a derelict restaurant building in Gorky Park being redesigned by the architect Rem Koolhaas. At the Garage, Ms. Fowle will join the prominent Swiss curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist, who serves as the center’s international program advisor.
