Professor Declan McGonagle, Conference Chair
Director, National College of Art and Design, Dublin.
Declan McGonagle worked and exhibited as an artist for a period after graduating from Belfast College of Art before being appointed the first Organiser of the Orchard Gallery in Derry in 1978.
His practice as a curator has included the Orchard Gallery, the ICA Exhibitions programme in London. He was first Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin [1990-2001] and has also directed independent projects such as the first Tyne International, [A New Necessity], and has initiated innovative Public Art and Community and Education Programmes.
He was short-listed for the Turner Prize [1987] and has also served on the Turner Prize Jury [1993] and other national and international Award Juries and has been External Examiner in a number of UK third level Institutions. He speaks and writes regularly on relations between the artist/art, the institution and communities and is a contributing Editor of Artforum [New York] and a member of the editorial Panel of Engage [UK]. He was Irish Commissioner for the 1993 Venice and 1994 Sao Paulo Biennales, has served on many Boards and Irish Government cultural bodies and, in 2004, completed the City Arts Centre’s Civil Arts Inquiry in Dublin. He has been a mentor on the Clore Leadership Programme [London] and is a member of the Board of the Liverpool Biennial, City Arts, Dublin and ProjectBase in Cornwall. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, London, and was a member of the Museum Working Group of the Healing Through Remembering Project, Belfast [2004 - 2008].
He was the first Director of Interface, a practice based research centre in the School of Art and Design at the University of Ulster in Belfast [2004-2008], which deals with issues of art, design and context and is currently the Director of the National College of Art and Design, in Dublin.