Perspective Tour: Dana Friis-Hansen

Exploring Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses

Join us on Sunday, December 8 starting at 2P for a Perspective Tour led by Dana Friis-Hansen, American art curator, museum director, and contemporary art writer. Perspective Tours is a new talk and tour series in which guest artists and curators share information about their own work while lending insights into our exhibitions. This season, we’ll be exploring Carl Cheng: Nature Never Loses through the eyes of members of Austin’s creative community.

Dana Friis-Hansen will connect his extensive curatorial practice with the public artworks of Carl Cheng, offering a compelling lens on how art, community engagement, and the natural world intersect within site-specific projects. Beginning with a presentation in our Community Room, guests will then join Friis-Hansen in the galleries to discuss select works from Carl Cheng’s exhibition.

With over four decades as a curator, museum director, and cultural connector, Dana Friis-Hansen has shaped contemporary art discourse on an international scale. His career spans leadership roles at the Grand Rapids Art Museum and the Austin Museum of Art (now The Contemporary Austin), alongside curatorial posts at esteemed institutions such as the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and MIT List Visual Arts Center, where in 1988, he organized Carl Cheng’s exhibition Impressions of an Invisible Sculpture. A recognized writer and editor, Friis-Hansen has contributed to numerous exhibitions, catalogues, and scholarly publications, and has built a reputation for fostering dialogue between artists, institutions, and global audiences.

Join Dana as he reflects on his career-long commitment to creating spaces for artistic innovation and civic engagement, while exploring Carl Cheng’s works that similarly address public interaction, technology, and environmental themes.

About Dana Friis-Hansen

Building upon a four-decade career as a contemporary art curator, critic, and museum director, since 2023 Dana Friis-Hansen has focused on connecting artists, museums, communities through writing, curating, cultural exchanges and travel, with an emphasis on Japan.

Before returning to Austin in 2023, he served as Director and CEO of the Grand Rapids Art Museum, 2011-2023 and Executive Director of the Austin Museum of Art (now The Contemporary Austin) from 2002-2011. His earlier curatorial positions include the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas; Nanjo & Associates in Tokyo, Japan; and MIT List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Friis-Hansen is an accomplished curator, writer, and editor with dozens of exhibitions, catalogues, books, articles, and published papers to his credit, and served frequently as a guest curator, public speaker, and on many advisory boards, juries, and panels. He is a graduate of Carleton College; received a Helena Rubinstein Museum Studies Fellowship at the Whitney Independent Study Program; and attended the Getty Museum Leadership Institute.