Category: Museum Director
Nationality: American
Last Year: 74
When Ralph Rugoff assumed the directorship of the Hayward Gallery in 2006, The Guardian – noting his playful experimentation during six years at CCA Wattis, in San Francisco – wagered that people would be queuing up ‘to be dangled upside down by their ankles’. Kinesthetic antics have, indeed, become the Hayward’s speciality. Last summer’s Walking in My Mind offered hallucinatory environments and a vast pornographic workshop. ‘Smart populism’ has remained the watch-word this year, via Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha shows. With an upstairs Project Space delivering the speedy counterpoint to weighty institutional shows, and presuming Rugoff and his cocurators can keep pleasing tourists and insiders, the Hayward’s future looks rosy.