Camilø Alvårez, Owner, Director and Preparator at Samsøñ, formerly Samson Projects 41:51
Camilo Alvarez joins us from Boston to discuss his trajectory from working at nonprofits to owning his own gallery to closing the space in an effort to rethink his relationship to the gallery system. After many years working in the art world, getting a master’s degree in museum studies at Harvard was a first step in positioning himself differently in relation to artists and audiences. What’s coming next? Listen to find out.
Camilo Alvarez was born in 1976 in New York, NY and resides in Boston, MA. He was born to Dominican parents and lived in Santo Domingo for 7 years. He received a B.A. in Art History from Skidmore College (Saratoga Springs, NY) and a Masters of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA).
He has worked at Exit Art (NY, NY), Socrates Sculpture Park (Queens, NY), MIT’s List Visual Art Center (Cambridge, MA) and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (NY, NY & Skowhegan, ME). He is the Co-Chair of the Advisory Board at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and is on the National Advisory Council of Skidmore College’s Tang Teaching Museum.
He is the Owner, Director and Preparator at Samsøñ formerly Samson Projects, founded in 2004. He has given solo exhibitions to William Pope.L (2010), Rebecca Morris (2006), Kader Attia (2008), and Beverly Semmes (2017) among many. Samsøn’s programs and exhibitions have been reviewed by the New York Times, ArtForum, the Boston Globe and Flash Art. The gallery has participated in art fairs including ARCO (Madrid, Spain) MACO (Mexico City, Mexico), NADA (Miami, FL & NY, NY) and the Armory (NY, NY). Samsøñ placed works in the permanent collections of the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Institute of Contemporary Boston among others. In 2010, Samsøñ commenced sübsamsøn, a form of artist’s residency. As of 2017, Samsøñ became itinerant.
