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| Ydessa Hendeles | |
|---|---|
| Name | Ydessa Hendeles |
| Birth date | 1948 |
| Birth place | Dortmund, Westphalia |
| Occupation | Art collector, curator, philanthropist, artist |
| Known for | Contemporary art exhibitions, Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation |
Ydessa Hendeles is a German-born Canadian curator, collector, artist and philanthropist known for large-scale, conceptually driven exhibitions and installations that explore memory, identity, psychoanalysis and trauma. She has organized influential projects across North America and Europe, collaborated with institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Modern, and established the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto. Hendeles's work situates historical photographs, objects, and contemporary art within narratives referencing figures and institutions like Sigmund Freud, Adolf Hitler, Anne Frank, and collections such as the Jewish Museum (New York).
Born in Dortmund in 1948 to a family of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe, Hendeles emigrated to Canada as part of postwar migrations linked to movements between Westphalia and North America. She undertook studies influenced by cultural centers including Toronto and the broader Canadian arts community shaped by institutions like the National Gallery of Canada and the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Her formative years intersected with postwar diasporic networks, the legacy of World War II, and debates around Holocaust memory as framed by exhibitions at places such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Yad Vashem memorial.
Hendeles began assembling a collection and producing exhibitions that engaged with artists represented by galleries like Gagosian Gallery, David Zwirner Gallery, and projects connected to museums including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Frick Collection, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She curated collaborations with curators from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Tate Modern, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum, integrating works by artists such as John Baldessari, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall, Louise Bourgeois, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, and Maurizio Cattelan. Her curatorial practice often negotiated archives, private collections, and institutional holdings including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and university collections at Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
Hendeles established the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto as a platform to mount permanent and temporary installations, support residency programs, and lend works to museums like the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Neue Nationalgalerie, and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The Foundation engaged with cultural partners including the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the AGO and academic institutions such as York University and University of Toronto Scarborough. The project's scope involved exchanges with European foundations like the Fondation Cartier and philanthropic organizations including the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.
Hendeles produced landmark exhibitions such as a thematic installation integrating vernacular photography, figurines, and contemporary painting that dialogued with works by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Paul Cézanne, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, and André Kertész. She collaborated on touring projects with the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum Ludwig, and the Jewish Museum (New York), and curated exhibitions that involved loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, and the Rijksmuseum. Her projects often appeared in festival contexts alongside institutions like the Venice Biennale, the Documenta exhibition in Kassel, and the Skulptur Projekte Münster.
Hendeles's practice blends curatorship, installation art, and archival research, addressing memory, trauma, the archive, and the visual culture of Jewish identity in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. She employed objects and images in conversation with artists such as Rachel Whiteread, Kara Walker, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Thomas Demand, and Shimon Attie, and referenced psychoanalytic thought including figures like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Her installations invoked historical events and institutions including the Nuremberg Trials, the Weimar Republic, Kristallnacht, and migration narratives tied to cities such as Berlin, Vienna, Warsaw, and Montreal.
Hendeles received honours and recognition from cultural bodies and orders such as appointments and awards connected to the Order of Canada, grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, and accolades from municipal arts councils in Toronto and Ontario. Her exhibitions were shortlisted and reviewed by critics from publications associated with the New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, Artforum, and the Art Review, and she was invited to lecture at universities including Columbia University, Yale University, University of Oxford, and McGill University.
Hendeles's collecting and curatorial legacy has influenced contemporary museum practice, the study of photographic archives, and dialogues around restitution and memory involving institutions like the German Lost Art Foundation and the Commission for Looted Art in Europe. Her work continues to resonate with scholarship emerging from departments at Princeton University, University College London, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv University, and with contemporary curators working across museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Category:Canadian curators Category:Canadian art collectors Category:People from Dortmund