The New York Times
Gray Center Fellowship | vanessa german at the Logan Center for the Arts
By Aruna D’Souza
“When I sat down to interview the artist vanessa german in her bright, airy temporary studio at the University of Chicago, she was the one who asked the first question. And the second, and the third. She wanted to know who I was and what motivated me in my work and life. She listened to my answers so intently that I was momentarily unnerved. Her beaded totemic sculptures, some modeled on African power figures, along with an installation on the National Mall, her community-based activism and her collaborative performances have lately been garnering art world attention and major awards.
One of the threads that connects her varied interests is a belief that art can restore our capacities to love ourselves and our communities — but only after we confront traumas and injustices, past and present, that stand in the way of such care. Another is her preternatural capacity for empathy.
…German enfolds all parts of her experience into her work, said Stephanie Cristello, a curator of the exhibition, adding that she ‘has an ability to channel any issue, whether intimate and personal or universal.’”
Read here
Chicago Sun Times
Chicago Art Curator Stephanie Cristello Embraces Daring Approach
By Stephano Esposito
…“In a space like this, in order to do a subtle gesture, you have to go a little over the top,” says Stephanie Cristello, 32, curator of the Driehaus Museum’s recently opened contemporary art exhibition “Twin Flame, Double Ruin,” featuring the work of Danish artist Sif Itona Westerberg. “In order to make it look like it fits, you have to do something that’s a little more daring than what you would do in a space that just has white walls and fluorescent lights.” Cristello embraces the daring side of assembling contemporary art in spaces where you probably wouldn’t expect to see it — like the Driehaus Museum, where silk damask wall coverings share space with polished walnut and oak.”… (March 21, 2024)
Read here
Photographer: Anthony Vasquez
SAIC News
…“The Chicago Sun-Times named alum Stephanie Cristello (MFA 2013) as Someone to Watch in 2024, spotlighting Cristello’s unique approach to curation. Her recent curatorial project, Sif Itona Westerberg’s exhibition at the Driehaus Museum, exemplifies the curator’s bold positioning of art in unconventional spaces. Westerberg, the Danish artist on display, says: “Sometimes, you feel like you have to explain everything and really make sure, especially with the curator, that they understand what your work is about. With Stephanie, she just got it.”
artnet
87-Year-Old Artist Barbara Kasten’s Career-Defining Monograph Shows She’s More Than Just a Photographer
By Taylor Dafoe
…“The camera figured into her work only insofar as it could document what was there before she had to take it down,” Cristello explained, adding that the book was borne from a question that doubled as a challenge: “How can we… provide a different perspective to where the photographs came from?” The book, she said, “is almost like a different origin story, but through the conversation of new work.”… (March 13, 2023)
Read here
Flaunt
Interview
by Constanza Falco Raez
…“I connect with Stephanie Cristello from Canada, where she is quarantining for 2 weeks before being able to come back to the US. She was in Denmark before, overlooking her most recent curatorial job: Saturnine at Kunsthal Aarhus. This was Cristello’s first singular painter exhibition, showcasing works by Los Angeles-based artist Theodora Allen. The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the same name, Theodora Allen: Saturnine. A catalogue published by Motto Books made up of fictional texts and critical essays. The book and exhibit alike investigate the use of symbols in art, literature, music, film, and history, reflecting on the history of Saturn, which has become the symbol for melancholy, from ancient myth and the Middle Ages through to the present. Although they go hand in hand, they are not one and the same, explains Cristello, “the exhibition is not a carbon copy of the book, and the book is not an exhibition catalog that way.”…” (March 28, 2022)
Read here
Artforum
From the News Desk | …”She has previously worked as senior editor for ArtSlant, and she has contributed to ArtReview, Elephant Magazine, Frieze Magazine, and Bomb Magazine, among other publications. She also serves as director and curator at Chicago Manual Style, a project space dedicated to thematic exhibitions and publishing. Recently, she facilitated a partnership between the Palais de Tokyo and the Institut Français wherein the two organizations presented an exhibition at the DuSable Museum of African American History.
Cristello said in a statement, “After six years with the organization, and the launch of numerous core programs, I look forward to being at the helm of expanding the legacy of an exposition whose mission reflects the strength of Chicago’s unique cultural and artistic context—as a site for leading challenging and rigorous discourse, presenting innovative platforms and initiating institutional collaborations within the global contemporary art field.””… (November 13, 2018)
Read here
Newcity
Art 50: Chicago’s Visual Vanguard 2019
By Kerry Cardoza
18. Stephanie Cristello (Artistic Director, EXPO Chicago)
…“After six years as EXPO Chicago’s director of programming, Stephanie Cristello’s adroit curatorial eye helped secure her recent promotion as the fair’s artistic director. Cristello is also the director and curator of Chicago Manual Style, a gallery she runs out of her garage. Her expertise extends to her publishing and editorial work, as editor-in-chief of The Seen, an international journal of contemporary art that she founded in 2013. In each of her roles, Cristello fuels cultural exchanges with leading global institutions as part of her desire for Chicago to be recognized as a core location of the global arts community.”… (August 29, 2019)
Chicago Magazine
Insider’s Guide to the Gallery Scene You Don’t Know About
By Elliot J. Reichert
Five spaces that make creative use of real estate. (April 2, 2019)
Read here
Michigan Avenue Magazine
Behind the Scenes: Stephanie Cristello
By Kelsey Ogletree
Photography by Colleen Durkin
(September 19, 2018)
Le Quotidien de l'Art
Comment EXPO CHICAGO a Reconquis l'Amérique
Par Armelle Malvoisin
La foire d’art contemporain connaît un nouvel essor depuis sa reprise en 2012 par une équipe qui a organisé son retour sur son emplacement historique et mène une programmation très dynamique.
« Les clés du succès pour bâtir la réputation de la foire ont été l’élaboration de programmes curatoriaux et un certain nombre d’initiatives internationales qui font aujourd’hui partie de l’ADN d’EXPO CHICAGO.» —Stéphanie Cristello, Directrice des Programmes d’EXPO CHICAGO. Envoyée spéciale à Chicago (October 28, 2018)
ARTnews
EXPO CHICAGO 2017 Courted New Collectors and Exhibited Energy Fit for the Future
By Sarah Douglas
…“I was flown to EXPO and put up in a hotel to participate in a panel discussion about art journalism. (It’s an issue in which EXPO, to its credit, seems to take an interest. Not enough people in the art world know that Karman, for instance, serves as publisher of The Seen, a local art journal edited by the tireless Stephanie Cristello, who curates the fair’s /Dialogues program.) Second: I grew up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a half-hour drive from Milwaukee, and I suppose on some level I have a nostalgic investment in a Midwest fair succeeding.
With all that noted, I saw some terrific work at EXPO, at booths for galleries like Los Angeles’s Grice Bench and San Francisco’s Jessica Silverman. I saw major Chicago collectors like Larry Fields, and I saw museum honchos like the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s director, Madeleine Grynsztejn, and its curator, Omar Kholeif. Two heavy-hitting newcomers to the fair, Gagosian and Lévy Gorvy, put real effort into their booths: Gagosian exhibited a particularly dark and brooding group show (read more about that here), and, at Lévy Gorvy, co-director Brett Gorvy used the word “intellectual” in reference to a booth with challenging works by Adrian Piper and a terrific new painting by Pat Steir. (And at relatively modest price points: Whereas the gallery brought a $30 million Jean-Michel Basquiat to Art Basel in Switzerland, Gorvy said the ceiling at Expo was $2 million to $3 million.)…” (October 10, 2017)
Read here
Crain's Chicago Business
THE SEEN Launches Print Publication
By Robert Loerzel
…“THE SEEN, Chicago's International Online Journal of Contemporary & Modern Art, is publishing its first print issue in September, with plans to distribute free copies of the full-color, oversize journal at EXPO CHICAGO, Sept. 17-20 at Navy Pier. THE SEEN, an independent editorial affiliate of EXPO CHICAGO, has published 21 monthly online issues. “Our goal is to move to a quarterly edition over the next year,” Editor-in-Chief Stephanie Cristello says via email. The magazine covers art exhibits and events around the world as well as Chicago's art scene, and Cristello says she aims to get international distribution.”… (July 30, 2015)
Read here
VICE
At EXPO CHICAGO, Not-for-Profits Make the Running
By Cedar Pasori
…”Taking this anti-commercial sentiment further, David Shrigley was asked to create a site-specific series for a billboard located at 515 West Congress Parkway. Inspired by newsstand sandwich boards in the UK, Shrigley's NEWSseries features humorous headlines announcing absurd, false, or mundane occurrences. "The OVERRIDE program provides a unique opportunity for these artists' works to intercept our everyday landscape, at various intersections between time and place," says Stephanie Cristello, EXPO CHICAGO's Director of Programming. “We were also eager to use the format of the billboard itself as a conceptual 'site,' which is illustrated perfectly in David Shrigley's new commission.”
Cristello understands the power of context, and lack thereof, within the OVERRIDE project. This includes not only a billboard's location, or whether the screen is even displaying "art," but also which ads show up before and after. "The potential of the program is that each of the works on view shift and change through what is, in many ways, an unpredictable circumstance," says Cristello. "For example, over the course of the last week, many of the artworks were viewed either just before or after a PSA for disaster relief from Hurricane Harvey. This was not initially intended as part of the context. In this way, the program is not only sensitive to subjectivity, but also current events.””… (October 10, 2017)
Read here
The Art Newspaper
EXPO CHICAGO Courts the High-Minded Collector with Interdisciplinary Offerings
By Ruth Lopez
…“EXPO CHICAGO, the international Modern and contemporary art fair, returns to its lakefront home. Of the 135 galleries presenting this year, Gagosian is the most conspicuous addition. Further signs of Expo’s development into a fixture on the art circuit can be read in institutional collaborations and the return of Luhring Augustine, Galerie Perrotin and Anton Kern Gallery, among others.
This year’s edition is designed to maximise crossover potential with the second Chicago Architecture Biennial. Stephanie Cristello, the fair’s director of programming, says that aligning with the design community was an important opportunity to branch out and “trace the lineage and consider where that trajectory might lead in future years.””… (October 10, 2017)
Read here
Flash Art
Interview with Stephanie Cristello
By Sam Korman
…“From September 22 through 25, the fifth edition of the EXPO CHICAGO art fair will take place at Chicago’s Navy Pier. The fair will present an array of national and international galleries, alongside specially organized exhibition projects such as IN/SITU and EXPO VIDEO. Flash Art spoke with EXPO’s director of programming, Stephanie Cristello.
I attended the first EXPO in 2012. What’s changed since then?
We launched EXPO VIDEO in 2013, working with Alfredo Cramerotti (MOSTYN) in 2015 and Daria de Beauvais (Palais de Tokyo) for the 2016 edition. We’ve expanded and strengthened the panel programming — this year, our inaugural symposium on conceptualists Art & Language is a highlight. In 2015, we inaugurated a program in the Northern Trust Anchor Lounge specifically for discussions on collecting, which is our way of not limiting intellectual conversations to topics outside of the market — after all, we are an art fair. This year we will host talks such as “Collecting in the Age of Futurity” and “The Trans-Atlantic Museum.”
EXPO seems driven by curators—especially the Curatorial Forum. Why this emphasis?
The Curatorial Forum creates an opportunity for colleagues in the field to exchange and collaborate, while supporting our dealers by ensuring leading figures will be in Chicago during the fair. There are the “public” relationships — such as this year’s IN/SITU program curated by Diana Nawi (Pérez Art Museum Miami), but also the more “secret” exchanges that have led to wonderful curatorial focuses. The rhizomatic structure of an exposition of this scale means that each year we get to develop more nuance, and start something completely fresh, all at once.
How does the fair respond to an art climate marked by the recent closure of several young Lower East Side galleries in New York?
We hope for all the galleries we work with to succeed; this is an international fair open to many emerging exhibitors. EXPOSURE, featuring galleries eight years and younger, Special Exhibitions, EXPO Editions + Books, and EXPO Projects allow us to support their mission in a commercially viable way.”… (September 19, 2016)
Read here
Newcity
Stephanie Cristello Appointed Senior Editor at ArtSlant
By Matt Morris
…“Last month, writer and artist Stephanie Cristello was appointed as one of the senior editors for ArtSlant. In this new role, she will be overseeing coverage not only in Chicago, but also Toronto (Cristello’s hometown) and Santa Fe. This appointment follows her taking on the role of editor-in-chief for THE SEEN, the publication for EXPO CHICAGO, last October, where she will continue as well. Cristello graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with her BFA in 2013. Much of her art-making involves text and shares the lithe, curious approach in her writing.
Looking forward to her new position at ArtSlant, Cristello described by email the interesting ways that their art coverage encourages drawing connections between projects happening throughout the world. “ArtSlant has this way of inadvertently forcing coincidence; it is the perfect environment for happenstances to occur on a more international scale. I am definitely interested in this idea of expanded connectivity,” she writes.”… (July 15, 2015)
Read here