Carlo McCormick


Carlo McCormick is an American culture critic and curator living in New York City. He is the author of numerous books monographs and catalogues on contemporary art and artists.

Pedagogic and art writing activities

McCormick lectures and teaches extensively at universities and colleges around the United States on popular culture and art. His writing has appeared in , Aperture, Art in America, Art News, Artforum, Camera Austria, High Times, Spin, Tokion, Vice and other magazines.
McCormick was Senior Editor of Paper.

''The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984''

McCormick was guest curator of the exhibition The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984 that was held at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery and Fales Library. The exhibition examined the rich cross-section of artists and activities that coexisted and often overlapped in Lower Manhattan between 1974 and 1984. Emerging out of the deflated optimism of the Summer of Love the Downtown no wave scene attracted painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians, performance art, filmmakers, and writers who could afford the then-low rent lofts and Lower East Side tenement apartments.
The Downtown Show: the New York Art Scene from 1974 to 1984 show traveled to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and the Austin Museum of Art, in Austin, Texas. It was chosen as first place winner by the International Association of Art Critics/USA for best thematic show in New York City in 2005-2006.

Other curatorial activities

McCormick has also curated shows for the Bronx Museum of Art, the Queens Museum of Art and the Woodstock Center for Photography, and collaborated with The Museum of Sex on their exhibition Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971-1985, featuring visuals chronicling the emergence of punk subculture and punk music.