Felix Burda Grants
Four Felix Burda Grants, in memory of the late Felix Burda, are given by Hubert Burda Foundation to support the research project GAM. The grants are destined for young curators and scholars whose specialties are contemporary art and the future of museums.
Chin-tao Wu
The first grant was awarded on November 10, 2008 by the publisher Hubert Burda to the art historian Chin-tao Wu from Taiwan at Goethe-Institut München. Chin-tao Wu specializes in contemporary art and culture, with particular emphasis on their sociological and political aspects. She has contributed to the New Left Review, the New Statesman, Third Text, and the Journal of Visual Culture. Her latest book, Privatising Culture: Corporate Art Intervention since the 1980s, published by Verso in 2002, has been translated into Turkish (2005), Portuguese (2006), and Spanish (2007). She has been educated in London and in Taipei. She is Assistant Research Fellow at the Academia Sinica in Taiwan and Honorary Research Fellow of University College London. Amongst her current projects is a quantitative study of biennials in relation to globalization, and she is also preparing a wide-ranging study of contemporary art and haute-couture.
Sara Giannini
The second grant was awarded in December 2010 to the semiotician Sara Giannini from Bologna. Sara Giannini is research assistant in the frame of the GAM Project. Her research interests include global contemporary art, cultural studies, and cultural semiotics. In 2010 she graduated summa cum laude in Semiotics at the University of Bologna. In her MA thesis, entitled One Thing Leads to Another. Art of Citation and Theory of Ex-citation in Ai Weiwei’s Artistic Production, she has explored the constitution of artistic identities beyond national labels, taking Chinese artist Ai Weiwei as a case-study. Thanks to a partnership between the University of Bologna and Urs Meile Gallery (representative gallery of the artist) she realized a fieldwork in Beijing investigating Ai Weiwei’s working context. Alongside different activities within the cultural sphere, she has been contributing to the editorial board of Styles Report Berlin since 2008.
Clare McAndrew
The third grant was awarded on June 1, 2011 to Dr. Clare McAndrew. Clare McAndrew is a cultural economist, investment analyst and author. She completed her PhD in economics at Trinity College Dublin in 2001, where she also lectured and taught economics for four years. Clare then founded Arts Economics in 2005 (www.artseconomics.com), a research and consulting firm focused exclusively on the art economy. The company carries out bespoke research and analysis on all aspects of the fine and decorative art market for private and institutional clients. Clare has published widely on the economics of the art market, including her most recent book entitled Fine Art and High Finance, published by Bloomberg Press. She is a guest lecturer on the Masters program at Trinity College Dublin in the Trinity Irish Art Research Centre (TRIAC) and lectures on regulatory and taxation issues in the art market at Christie’s Education in London. She also lectures on a range of art market subjects for the Sotheby’s Institute in London.
