SITE Santa Fe creates significant experiences for visitors by presenting the most innovative visual art of our time in new and engaging ways. Year-round exhibitions and educational programs expand the creative and intellectual potential of the audience and carry forward the region’s tradition of fostering avant-garde art.
Launched in 1995 to organize the only international biennial of contemporary art in the United States, SITE has since presented eight international biennial exhibitions. Each drew global attention and brought important contemporary art to the Santa Fe community and beyond. Conceived to bring the global contemporary art dialogue to the art-rich Southwest, and as a major event on par with such renowned exhibitions as the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale, it has become an integral event for contemporary art aficionados, attracting tens of thousands of visitors from around the world. Past biennial curators have either arrived as or have subsequently become superstars in the world of contemporary art, a testament to SITE’s foresight and artistic clout. Following their SITE Santa Fe Biennial guest curatorships, Francesco Bonami (1997), Rosa Martínez (1999) and Robert Storr (2004) were chosen to organize the Venice Biennales in 2003, 2005, and 2007, respectively. Dave Hickey received the coveted MacArthur “Genius Award” after organizing SITE’s Biennial in 2001.
Klaus Ottmann (2006), Lance Fung (2008) and Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco (2010) all garnered significant praise for their respective biennials, and have gone on to exciting posts and projects worldwide.
The success of the first biennial influenced SITE to expand its programming to include exhibitions year round, often accompanied by highly acclaimed catalogues. SITE also hosts an Art & Culture series of lectures and performances, as well as an extensive education and outreach program for local schools, all of which attract 20,000-30,000 local, national and international visitors.
In 2010, Irene Hofmann was named the Phillips Director. Irene’s career includes prolific work as a curator in organizing and touring innovative exhibitions in collaboration with a wide range of partners. Her remarkable achievements as Executive Director of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, MD constitute a body of work that is consistent with SITE Santa Fe’s mission and core values. She plans to continue SITE’s legacy of presenting first one-person museum exhibitions of numerous emerging and now internationally recognized artists as well as significant group exhibitions, while garnering SITE an expanded profile among its national and international peer institutions as well as in our own community. Under Hofmann, SITE’s organizational history has continued to be a storied one.
