On March 10, 2011 at the New Museum in New York in an event co-presented with Independent Curators International (ICI), New Museum Director Lisa Phillips introduces Philippe Vergne, Director of the Dia Art Foundation, and Paul Chan, a New York based artist, to discuss the relevance, appropriateness, and invasiveness of the exhibition model and the institutions that support it, under the title Exhibition Machines.

Philippe Vergne has served as Director of the Dia Art Foundation in New York since 2008, following his tenure as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, where he inaugurated over twenty-five international exhibitions. With Chrissie Iles, he was co-curator of the 2006 Whitney Biennial. In 2008 he organized “Kara Walker: My Compliment, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,” which was awarded the “best monograph museum show nationally” by the International Association of Art Critics. Vergne’s “Yves Klein: With the Void, Full Powers” traveled from the Hirshhorn Museum to the Walker Art Center in 2010–11.

Paul Chan is an artist who lives and works in New York. Recent solo exhibitions include the New Museum, New York; Serpentine Gallery, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; and Portikus, Frankfurt. Chan’s single channel videos have been screened in film festivals worldwide, including the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. In November 2007, he collaborated with Creative Time and the Classical Theatre of Harlem to stage free site-specific performances of Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot in New Orleans.