Paul O'Neill

Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, and educator. Paul is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, since September 2017. PUBLICS is a curatorial and commissioning agency, and event space with a dedicated research library in Helsinki. Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York.

Paul is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (MIT Press, 2012), which has been translated into many languages. Paul has authored and co-edited numerous agenda-setting anthologies on curating. Paul’s most recent authored volume is Beyond Caring: Para-hosting as Curatorial Escape (Floating Opera Press, 2025).

Paul is editor of the curatorial anthology, Curating Subjects (2007), and co-editor of Curating and the Educational Turn (2010), and Curating Research (2014) both with Mick Wilson, and published by de Appel and Open Editions (Amsterdam and London). Paul is author of Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art (Amsterdam, Valiz, 2011), co-edited with Claire Doherty and author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, MASS., The MIT Press, 2012). Paul is responsible for the agenda-setting series of three curatorial anthologies, The Curatorial Conundrum; How Institutions Think, and Curating After the Global: Roadmaps to the Present, co-edited with Lucy Steeds, Mick Wilson et al, and published with the MIT Press, CCS Bard College and LUMA Foundation, in 2016, 2017 and 2019 respectively.

Since 2017 Paul has been a visiting professor in MA Curating at the Latvian Academy of Fine Arts, Between 2005 and 2017, O'Neill was a visiting international tutor at de Appel Amsterdam. He was an international research fellow with The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin from 2010-2013. From 2007 until 2010, O'Neill led the major international research program, 'Locating the Producers', at Situations, University of the West of England, Bristol. He has previously held lecturing positions on the MFA in Curating, Goldsmiths University of London, and Visual Culture, Middlesex University, among others.

Paul has co-curated over 70 shows across the world, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, educators and scholar of curatorial practice, public art, and exhibition histories, and most recently has published three artist’ books as author, co-editor; Maryam Jafri: Independence Days (2022), Kathrin Bohm: Art on the Scale of Life (2023), and Dave McKenzie Banners and Letters (2023). Paul's most recent books include CURIOUS (Open Editions, London, 2025) co-edited with Gerrie van Noord, and Not Going it Alone: Collective Curatorial Curating (Apex Art, New York, 2024), and the recently authored volume Beyond Caring: Para-hosting as Curatorial Escape (Floating Opera Press, 2025).