Claire Tancons is a curator, writer and researcher whose work focuses on carnival, public ceremonial culture, and popular movements. She was the associate curator for Prospect.1, the first New Orleans biennial, and Contemporary Arts Center, also in New Orleans (2007–09), as well as a curatorial consultant for Harlem Biennale (2010–12). As curator for the 7th Gwangju Biennale (2008) and guest curator for CAPE09, the second Cape Town Biennial (2009), she organized processions mixing the traditions of political demonstrations and carnival parades, opening the way to what has since been seen as a new model of curatorship, an example of cross-cultural curating.
Tancons is a former curatorial fellow of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program (2001). She has been the recipient of various research and travel grants including the Foundation for Arts Initiatives (2007 and 2009) and the Andy Warhol Foundation (2009), and she was awarded an Artistic Production Grant from the Prince Claus Fund (2009). Over the last couple of years she has lectured in academic and art institutions in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Asia. Her publications have been featured in academic and art journals and exhibition catalogues and translated into Korean, Italian, Portuguese and French. She served as a 2012 Center exhibitions panelist, and she contributed to the Center's 2013 publication Pigeons on the Grass, Alas: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field.
