For more than a decade, the New York–based artist, curator, and teacher Laurel Ptak has advocated for nonprofit and alternative art spaces and worked closely with contemporary artists to support rigorous and experimental projects. Since 2006, her practice has explored media and technology, especially in relation to difficult social and political questions. She is a former curator at Tensta Konsthall in Stockholm, received a 2013 Eyebeam fellowship, and was named a 2014 Leading Global Thinker. The book Undoing Property, which she coedited with the artist Marysia Lewandowska, was published by Sternberg Press in 2013. She is currently the director and curator of Triangle Arts Association, and teaches in the Art, Media, and Technology Department at Parsons the New School.
Ptak holds an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. Her recent curatorial and artistic activities include a talk on Philippe Parreno’s H
{N)Y P N(Y} OSIS exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory, New York (2015); a core visiting artist lecture at ACRE Residency Program, Chicago (2015); a talk at the Parsons Photo MFA program, New York (2015); serving as a Visegrad Fund jury member, Bratislava, Slovakia (2015); a lecture on “Professionalism and Its Discontents” at NADA, New York (2015); serving as a visiting critic at Moore College, Pennsylvania (2015) and Syracuse University, New York (2015); panel discussions at the Swiss Institute, New York (2015) and the SVA Curatorial Practice program, New York (2015); What will be different about art by the year 2050?, a dinner without an agenda at the Queens Museum, New York (2015); and Rethinking Residencies Reflects on Organizational Practice at the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2015).
