Viktor Misiano

Viktor Misiano was born in Moscow in 1957. From 1980 till 1990 he was a curator of contemporary art at the Pushkin National Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. From 1992 to 1997 he was the director of the Center for Contemporary Art (CAC) in Moscow. He curated the Russian participation in the Istanbul Biennale (1992), the Venice Biennale (1995, 2003), the São Paulo Biennale (2002, 2004), and the Valencia Biennale (2001). He was on the curatorial team for the Manifesta I in Rotterdam in 1996. In 1993 he was a founder of the Moscow Art Magazine (Moscow) and has been its editor-in-chief ever since; in 2003 he was a founder of the Manifesta Journal: Journal of Contemporary Curatorship (Amsterdam) and has been an editor there since 2011. In 2005 he curated the first Central Asia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 2007 he realized large scale exhibition project “Progressive Nostalgia: Art from the Former USSR” in the Centro per l’arte contemporanea, Prato (Italy), the Benaki Museum, Athens, KUMU, Tallinn, and KIASMA, Helsinki. His latest exhibition project is “Impossible Community” realized 2011 in Moscow Museum for Modern Art and awarded with National “Innovation” prize as the “Best exhibition of the year”. From October 2010 he is a Chairman of the International Foundation Manifesta. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate from the Helsinki University for Art and Design. He lives in Moscow (Russia) and Ceglie Messapica (Italy).