Stuart Comer

Stuart Comer is an American art curator and writer from Evansville, Indiana, who serves as the Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. He previously served as the first Curator of Film at Tate Modern in London and was one of three curators of the 2014 Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Early life and education

Comer grew up in Evansville and attended Evansville Day School, graduating in 1986.

He later attended Carleton College in Minnesota, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in art history in 1990. Comer subsequently moved to London and earned a master’s degree in curatorial studies from the Royal College of Art.

Early career

Comer began his museum career as a book buyer at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

He later moved to London, where he became associated with Tate Modern, one of the world’s leading museums of modern and contemporary art.

From 2002 to 2004, Comer served as Tate Modern’s Curator of Public Programmes. He subsequently became the museum’s first Curator of Film.

At Tate Modern, Comer was responsible for exhibitions, programs and acquisitions involving film, video and other forms of moving-image art. His projects included work by artists and filmmakers including Nan Goldin, Barbara Hammer, Derek Jarman, Tony Conrad, Djibril Diop Mambéty, Jennifer West and Throbbing Gristle.

Comer also helped expand Tate’s film and video collection, overseeing acquisitions of works by artists including Cory Arcangel, Charles Atlas, Peter Campus, Mike Kelley, Jonas Mekas, Paul McCarthy and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

In 2007, Comer served as a co-curator of the Lyon Biennial in France.

Tate Modern Tanks

Comer played an important role in the development of Tate Modern’s programming for live and time-based art.

In 2012, Tate Modern opened The Tanks, a major exhibition space created from the former oil tanks of the Bankside Power Station that houses the museum.

Comer served as a co-curator of the opening festival, which presented live performance, film, installation and other time-based works.

The program included work by artists including Tania Bruguera, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Boris Charmatz, Ei Arakawa and Aldo Tambellini.

Museum of Modern Art

In 2013, Comer joined the Museum of Modern Art in New York as Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art.

At MoMA, Comer became responsible for the museum’s collection and exhibition program involving media and performance while also participating in the broader presentation and development of MoMA’s collection.

His exhibitions and projects at the museum have included Cut to Swipe (2014), Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980 (2015), BRUCE CONNER: IT’S ALL TRUE (2016), Mark Leckey: Containers and Their Drivers (2016), Tania Bruguera: Untitled (Havana, 2000) (2018), Haegue Yang: Handles (2019), member: Pope.L, 1978–2001 (2019), Adam Pendleton: Who Is Queen? (2021) and Signals: How Video Transformed the World (2023).

Comer also leads the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, MoMA’s space dedicated to performance, music, sound, spoken word and expanded approaches to moving-image art.

He currently holds the title of Lonti Ebers Chief Curator of Media and Performance at MoMA.

2014 Whitney Biennial

Comer was selected as one of the three curators of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, one of the most prominent recurring exhibitions of contemporary American art.

The exhibition was organized by Comer alongside curators Michelle Grabner and Anthony Elms.

Rather than jointly selecting a single exhibition, each curator was given a separate floor of the Whitney Museum’s Marcel Breuer building and developed an independent presentation.

The 2014 exhibition was also historically significant as the final Whitney Biennial held in the museum’s Breuer building before the Whitney moved to its new building in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District.

Writing and publications

In addition to his curatorial work, Comer has written extensively about contemporary art, film, video and performance.

His writing has appeared in publications including Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, Mousse, Parkett and ArtReview.

He has written about numerous artists and filmmakers, including Andrea Fraser, David Lamelas, Tom Burr, Akram Zaatari, Sharon Lockhart, Mark Morrisroe and Gillian Wearing.

Comer is also the editor of Film and Video Art, published by Tate in 2009.

His career has focused particularly on the relationship between contemporary art and moving images and on expanding the role of film, video, sound and live performance within major art museums.