Francesco Bonami

Life and career

Bonami was born in Florence. After a brief spell as an artist he moved to New York City in 1991 where he was appointed U.S. Editor of Flash Art magazine. From 1999 to 2008 he was Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and artistic director of Fondazione Pitti Discovery in Florence. He directed the 2nd edition of the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in 1997, the 50th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2003 and was one of the curators of Manifesta 3 (2000) and the 2010 Whitney Biennial.

Bonami has also organised exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (London), the Hayward Gallery (London), the Pinault Foundation (Venice), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Qatar Museums Authority in Doha and the JNBY Foundation in Hangzhou.

In 2013 Bonami wrote in La Stampa that the Venice City Council decision to remove the "Boy with Frog" sculpture by Charles Ray from the front of the Punta della dogana was "administrative cowardice" and that the lamppost which replaced it represented "a moment of cultural darkness".

Publications

Bonami has authored monographs on the work of Doug Aitken, Vanessa Beecroft, Maurizio Cattelan, Thomas Demand, Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Gabriel Orozco and Jeff Wall, amongst others.

Auction activities

In October 2014, Bonami presented a partially available for sale exhibition of contemporary sculpture at Phillips in London. The following year, he organised an auction of 50 works of Italian art at Phillips New York, including Paola Pivi, Roberto Cuoghi and Maurizio Cattelan.