Hamza Walker: The Renaissance Society Years

The collected exhibition essays of Hamza Walker, former director of education at the Renaissance Society.

Hamza Walker was director of education at the Renaissance Society for twenty-one years, between 1994 and 2015. During that time, he wrote essays about almost every single exhibition, both those he curated and many others curated by Suzanne Ghez. These texts were published first in the Renaissance Society’s newsletters and then eventually on the exhibition posters, which were distributed far more widely. 

In the course of this workman-like writing in the service of the institution, Walker developed not only his distinctive personal writing style and a keen eye but also a theory of what museum education could be and do. In his writing, Walker draws on his art's historical knowledge but looks equally to current events (both minutely local and international), insisting on the mutual relevance and related nature of the two. In Walker’s own words, “If we’re going to live up to the idea that art is for everybody, it needs a set of wider reference points,” an emphasis that has arguably shaped the identity of the institution in turn.

This book collects those essays together into a volume that celebrates Walker’s brilliant, joyful, and generous writing. It also serves as a lively record of two decades of the Renaissance Society’s exhibition programming and reflects the prevalent theories, issues, and fashions of the art world during that time, not to mention the events occurring in the wider world.
 

Hamza Walker became the second director of The Brick in Los Angeles after twenty-one years as curator and director of education at the Renaissance Society in Chicago. Walker was the recipient of the 1999 Norton Curatorial Grant, the 2005 Walter Hopps Award for curatorial achievement, and a 2006 Emily Hall Tremaine Award for the exhibition Black Is, Black Ain't. In 2010, Walker was awarded the Ordway Prize as a mid-career curator whose writings and exhibitions have had significant impact on the field of contemporary art. In addition to serving on panels and juries throughout Europe and the United States, he has written for numerous artists' monographs and publications such as Artforum and Parkett.