Carlos Motta Named 2025-26 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism

Annandale-on-Hudson, NY (November 12, 2025) — The Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS Bard) and Bard College’s Human Rights Project are pleased to announce that multidisciplinary artist and professor Carlos Motta will hold the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism for 2025-26. Established in 2014, the initiative supports an annual faculty position bringing leading scholars, activists, and artists to teach and conduct research within the CCS Bard graduate program and the undergraduate Human Rights Program. The endowed position represents Bard College and the Keith Haring Foundation’s longstanding commitment to advancing scholarship and creative practices at the intersection of art and social justice.

Born in Colombia and based in New York, Motta’s art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities. A chronicler of untold narratives, he explores the experiences of post-colonial subjects and societies through a range of media, including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.

“Carlos Motta’s decades-long practice foregrounds art as a site of resistance and repair, expanding Keith Haring’s legacy of social engagement into the urgencies of the present. Through projects that bring together queer, trans, and decolonial perspectives across the Americas, Motta has consistently challenged the boundaries between artistic practice, research, and activism,” said Mariano López Seoane, Director of the Graduate Program and ISLAA Fellow in Latin American Art at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. “His work invites critical reflection on visibility, power, and collective memory—values that deeply resonate with CCS Bard’s mission and the spirit of the Keith Haring Chair initiative." 

“We are proud to have an artist and activist of Carlos Motta’s stature and commitments teaching with us this coming year,” said Thomas Keenan, Director of Bard’s Human Rights Project. “His focus on the rights and claims of under-represented communities, and his insistence on making their voices heard, is more important – and more creative – now than ever.”

The announcement of the 2025-26 Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism follows CCS Bard’s recent opening of a new 12,000-square-foot addition to its library and archives—the Keith Haring Wing, named in recognition of a lead $3 million gift from the Keith Haring Foundation. The expansion further builds on a longstanding partnership between CCS Bard and the Foundation, which also endowed the Keith Haring Chair in Art and Activism in 2022. More information on the new Keith Haring Wing is available at the link.

About Carlos Motta
Carlos Motta (b. 1978) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores sexuality, gender, and power through historical research and collaborative practice. In 2024, Motta presented Gravidade (Gravity) at Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, and participated in Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini at La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. His mid-career survey Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance was presented at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in 2025 and will travel to OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz in 2026.

Past solo exhibitions include career surveys at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) (2023); The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2022); Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) (2017); and Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2015). His work has been featured in major international exhibitions, including Scientia Sexualis, Pacific Standard Time (PST), Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Los Angeles (2024); Signals: How Video Transformed the World, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (2023); Is it morning for you yet?, 58th Carnegie International (2022); ); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2020); Home is a Foreign Place, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016); and Le spectacle du quotidien, X Lyon Biennale (2010), among others.

Motta has been recognized with numerous prizes and awards, including the Artist Impact Initiative x Creative Time R&D Fellowship (2023); grants from the Penn Mellon Just Futures Initiative (2023), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (2019); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008). His work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá; among others.

Motta is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice in the Fine Arts Department at Pratt Institute.

The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is the leading institution dedicated to curatorial studies, a field exploring the conditions that inform contemporary exhibition-making and artistic practice. Through its Graduate Program, Library and Archives, and the Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard serves as an incubator for interdisciplinary practices, advances new and underrepresented perspectives in contemporary art, and cultivates a student body from diverse backgrounds in a broad effort to transform the curatorial field. CCS Bard’s dynamic and multifaceted program includes exhibitions, symposia, publications, and public events, which explore the critical potential of the practice of exhibition-making.

About the Human Rights Project
The Human Rights Project, founded at Bard in 1999, introduced the first freestanding interdisciplinary undergraduate degree program in Human Rights in the United States. Through teaching, research, and public programs, the Project is committed to exploring the too-often neglected cultural, aesthetic, and representational dimensions of human rights discourse. Since 2009, the Human Rights Project has collaborated with CCS Bard on the development of seminars, workshops, research projects, and symposia aimed at exploring the intersections between human rights and the arts. While academic in nature, this research and teaching draws heavily on the realm of practice, involving human rights advocates, artists, and curators.

About the Keith Haring Foundation
Keith Haring (1958-1990) generously contributed his talents and resources to numerous causes during his life. He conducted art workshops with children, created logos and posters for public service agencies, and produced murals, sculptures, and paintings to benefit health centers and communities impacted by systemic inequity. In 1989, Haring established a foundation to ensure that his philanthropic and artistic legacy would continue indefinitely.

The Keith Haring Foundation makes grants to not-for-profit entities that engage in charitable and educational activities. In accordance with Keith’s wishes, the Foundation concentrates its giving in two areas: the support of organizations which enrich the lives of young people and the support of organizations which engage in HIV/AIDS education, prevention, and care. The Foundation additionally maintains a collection of Haring’s art and archives and supports exhibitions, programming, and publications that serve to contextualize and illuminate the artist’s work and philosophy. www.haring.com.

Media Contacts
Resnicow and Associates
Resnicow and Associates
Juliet Sorce / Chelsea Beroza / Emma Gold / Onnie Woods
Tel: +1 212-671-5158 / 5165 / 5168 / 5170
Email: [email protected] 

 

This event was last updated on 11-12-2025

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