I spent the better part of the 1990s in Los Angeles, as Book Buyer at the Museum of Contemporary Art‘s book shop. I also began to write art reviews for various publications. I became an active participant in the art scene there and continue to follow closely the work being produced in Los Angeles. Eventually I pursued an MA in curatorial studies at the Royal College of Art in London. Upon graduation, I helped launch the Institute of Visual Culture, a temporary, contemporary art space on the grounds of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.
In 2002 I began work at Tate Modern in London as Curator of Public Events and organized international symposia on Eva Hesse, Max Beckmann, and Live Art. At the same time I initiated a collaboration between Tate and the British Film Institute, which allowed us easier access to a major film archive. This helped to launch a regular film program. Building on the success of the program, I began to organize regular screenings of film and video work by both emerging and historical artists. The film program at Tate has expanded rapidly and now constitutes one of the major platforms in London’s busy artists’ film circuit. In the process, my position changed to Curator: Film, Tate’s first permanent curatorial post for film. My position has also been moved from the education department to the exhibitions department.
In addition to numerous screenings and retrospectives of individual artists, I have recently presented surveys of experimental film and video from India, Eastern Europe and will do focus series on Brazil and the Middle East in 2007. In May 2006 I organized the first major screenings with live musical accompaniment in Tate Modern’s vast Turbine Hall. Since 2005 I have also become a curator in the Tate Collection with a focus on film and video.
Outside of Tate I write for Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, Parkett, Art Review, Untitled, and BUTT. I have also contributed to monographs on Gillian Wearing, Bik Van Der Pol, and Tom Burr, published an interview with Andrea Fraser in After Thought: New Writing on Conceptual Art, and contributed to Vitamin Ph, Phaidon’s recent survey of contemporary photography.
Recent freelance curatorial projects include a survey of Mark Aerial Waller’s work in ‘Videozone’ at the Center of Contemporary Art in Tel Aviv; ‘America’s Most Wanted’ for the Artists’ Cinema at the Frieze Art Fair in London; ‘Double Lunar Trouble’ at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London; ‘An American Family’ at Kunstverein Munich and CASCO, Utrecht; ‘Rudy Burckhardt Films’ for the Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; and I will be a co-curator for the 2007 Lyon Biennial.
Update: in 2013, Stuart was appointed Chief Curator of the Department of Media and Performance Art at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and, at the same time he acted as one of the three curators for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.