Nicola Ricciardi
Nicola Ricciardi (born 1985 in Milan, Italy) is the Artistic Director of miart – Milan’s international modern and contemporary art fair since October 2020.
He holds a B.A. Honors in Liberal Arts from Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, and a Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies from CCS Bard at Bard College, New York, where he graduated with a thesis on the work of Matthew Barney.
In the years 2021-2022 he curated the exhibition “Christian Frosi: The Empty Room” at GAMeC, Bergamo, co-curated the group show “Vogliamo Tutto: An Exhibition About Labor” at OGR – Officine Grandi Riparazioni, Turin, and the Italian chapter of Maria Hassabi’s live installation “HERE”, commissioned by Secession and Wiener Festwochen, Vienna.
From 2016 to 2020 Nicola was Artistic Director at OGR where he organized 20 exhibitions, including solo shows by Tino Sehgal, Susan Hiller, Mike Nelson, Monica Bonvicini, and Trevor Paglen, among many others, and over 70 concerts by artists and performers such as Kraftwerk, New Order + Liam Gillick, Holly Herdnon, Kamasi Washington, and Jason Moran.
From 2017 to 2018 he has been a Member of the Board of Directors of Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy.
Over the period of 2010 to 2015, Nicola worked as independent curator organizing exhibitions in Europe and the US by international and Italian artists including Alessandro Pessoli, Patrick Tuttofuoco, and Diego Perrone. He also took part in the curatorial team of the 55th Venice Biennale (2013) and in the collateral program of the 7th Berlin Biennal (2012) as Node Center Resident Curator.
Over the years, Nicola contributed to several art magazines such as Frieze, Mousse Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail, and his writings on the work of Alberto Garutti, Mike Nelson, Pablo Bronstein, Ari Benjamin Meyers, and Charlotte Posenenske have been featured in several art publications.
He’s the author of “The Empty Room: Christian Frosi and Other Escapes from the Art Scene” (Lenz Press, 2022) and the editor of “Vogliamo Tutto: Cultural Practices and Labor” (Lenz Press, 2021), “Museums at the Post-Digital Turn” (Mousse Publishing, 2019), and “Portraits, Portraits, Portraits” (Mousse Publishing, 2015).
Nicola currently teaches History of Contemporary Art in the post-graduate program in Visual Arts and Curatorial Studies at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, in Milan.