Karen Irvine
Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago
Karen Irvine is Chief Curator and Deputy Director, Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. She has organized over forty five exhibitions of contemporary photography, at the MoCP and other venues including the Hyde Park Art Center; Rockford Art Museum; Lishui International Photography Festival, China; Daegu Photography Biennale, South Korea, and the New York Photo Festival.
Irvine has contributed texts to many publications including FOAM, Art on Paper and Contemporarymagazines and monographs including Ann Lislegaard: Eyes Wide Open (The Royal Museum of Photography, Copenhagen); Paula McCartney: Non-flights of Fancy (Princeton Architectural Press), Barbara Probst: Exposures (Steidl), Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson (MACK), and Stefan Heyne Speak to Me (Hatje Cantz), amongst others. She has an MFA in photography from FAMU, Prague, Czech Republic, and an MA in art history from the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Irvine is interested in works based on strong ideas with a form that supports those ideas, justice-centered work.