Max Presneill
Max Presneill is an artist and curator based in Los Angeles, originally from London, UK.
He is the Director and Head Curator of the Torrance Art Museum, with particular curatorial interests in artist-led projects, emerging art, new models for curatorial methodologies and an international scope for partnerships, exchanges and building artistic communities. CBS Television named him in the top 8 Best Art Curators in Los Angeles (2015) and Blouin Modern Painters magazine included him in the 2018 Top 25 Curators to Watch from around the world, alongside colleagues from the Guggenheim, MOMA, Whitney, Tate, LACMA and other institutions. He has been honoured by the City of Torrance for Excellence in Art on 2 occasions.
More recently he has developed and presented NOMAD (the largest pop-up exhibition in US history in 2021), and ULTRA! – a large scale public-art festival of contemporary art (2021). He is also currently the Curatorial Director of TRYST (the world’s largest international art fair for artist-run spaces, in Los Angeles). Over the course of his curatorial career Presneill has curated more than 500 exhibitions, both in Los Angeles and worldwide, in Museums and commercial & alternative galleries, as well as occasional non-art locations.
Presneill is the co-Founder of Durden and Ray (2009 – current), a curatorial collaborative group for artists and a gallery in Los Angeles, as well as Founder and Curatorial Director of ARTRA Curatorial, an independent, voluntary, curatorial projects management team which organizes international exhibition exchanges).
As an artist, Presneill has exhibited throughout the world including Los Angeles, New York, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin, Istanbul, Sydney, Beijing, Tokyo and elsewhere, and is represented by Patrick Painter, Inc, as well as the Durden & Ray collective in Los Angeles, TW Fine Art in Brisbane, Australia, GCC Arte Contemporaneo in Merida, Mexico, ICFA in Beijing, Gallery Lara, Tokyo, and Patrajdas Contemporary in Utah.
Presneill has been a Professor of Art in both the UK and US, teaching at Undergraduate and Post-Graduate levels. His writings have been published in numerous publications including the magazine Mad Dogs & Englishmen and was also a contributing writer to the emerging artists section of FABRIK magazine for several years. He is the critical writer of over 50 artist and exhibition catalogues.
Become a member to access these monthly conversations on Zoom. Membership is free for the first month then £1 per month thereafter.