Francesco Bonami

Who is Francesco Bonami?

Francesco Bonami is an Italian art curator and writer who is currently the Artistic Director of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. Bonami moved to New York City in 1991 where he was appointed US 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 the 2010 Whitney Biennial.

Bonami has also curated exhibitions at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Hayward Gallery, the Pinault Foundation, the Walker Art Center and the Qatar Museums Authority in Doha.

In 2013 Bonami wrote in La Stampa that the removal of the "Boy with Frog" sculpture by Charles Ray from in front of the Punta della dogana, was "administrative cowardice" and that the lamppost which replaced it represented "cultural darkness".