27 Facts About Iwona Blazwick

Iwona Maria Blazwick OBE was born on 14 October 1955 and is a British art critic and lecturer.

Iwona Blazwick is currently the Chair of the Royal Commission for Al-'Ula's Public Art Expert Panel.

Iwona Blazwick was the Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London from 2001 to 2022.

Iwona Blazwick discovered Damien Hirst and staged his first solo show at a public London art gallery, Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1992.

Iwona Blazwick is married to Richard Noble, a Canadian philosopher and fine art lecturer at Goldsmiths University of London.

Iwona Blazwick is the child of Polish architects who both painted and inspired her passion for art and design.

Iwona Blazwick became an assistant curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, under the tutelage of Sandy Nairne, who is a former director of the National Portrait Gallery.

From 1984 to 1986, Iwona Blazwick was Director of AIR Gallery, London.

Iwona Blazwick worked as an independent curator for museums and major public arts projects in Europe and Japan, devising surveys of contemporary artists and commissioning new works of art.

From 1997 to 2001, Iwona Blazwick was a curator and then head of exhibitions at Tate Modern.

Iwona Blazwick co-curated the inaugural display and the groundbreaking exhibition 'Century City.

Iwona Blazwick was director of the Whitechapel Gallery in Whitechapel, in east London, from 2001 to 2022.

Iwona Blazwick has written monographs and articles on many contemporary artists and published extensively on themes and movements in modern and contemporary art, exhibition histories and art institutions.

Iwona Blazwick's writings include monographs on Gary Hume and Cornelia Parker ; and contributions to monographs and exhibition catalogues on Hannah Collins, Keith Coventry, Elmgreen and Dragset, Fischli and Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Katharina Fritsch, Roni Horn, Ilya Kabakov, Alex Katz, Paul McCarthy, Cornelia Parker, Annie Ratti, Hannah Starkey, Lawrence Weiner and Rachel Whiteread; and anthologies including Fresh Cream in 2001.

Iwona Blazwick was editor of the Tate Modern: The Handbook and Century City.

Iwona Blazwick contributes occasional reviews and commentaries for BBC and Channel Four television and BBC radio.

Iwona Blazwick wrote the introduction for Talking Art: Interviews with Artists Since 1976, published by Ridinghouse and Art Monthly and featuring the best interviews from the latter's 30-year run.

Iwona Blazwick is series editor of Documents of Contemporary Art; co-published with MIT Press these anthologies bring together the most important texts by artists, critics and historians on the big themes in art today, ranging from Participation to Failure.

Iwona Blazwick served on the advisory boards of the Government Art Collection; Sculpture in the City; and the Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth Commission.

Iwona Blazwick has sat on several art prize juries, including for the Turner Prize, the Jerwood Painting Prize, the 2002 Wexner Prize, the Clark Prize for Writing, the Menil Collection's Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement and the John Moores Painting Prize.

Iwona Blazwick was part of the juries that selected Helen Cammock as recipient of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women in 2018 and Nalini Malani as recipient of the Joan Miro Prize in 2019.

Iwona Blazwick is a standing member of the jury for Film London's Jarman Award.

Iwona Blazwick has sat on the selection panel of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship.

Iwona Blazwick was on the advisory board of Documenta 13, jury for the 2015,2017,2019,2021 Istanbul Biennale.

Iwona Blazwick was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to art in the 2008 New Year Honours.

Iwona Blazwick is a Fellow of the Royal College of Art and has received Honorary Doctorates from Plymouth University, the London Metropolitan University, Goldsmiths' College, the University of the Arts and Middlesex University.

Iwona Blazwick has been called "one of the most important woman in British art".