Reichardt, Jasia.

Biographical/Historical Note

Art crtic and curator with an interest in art and its intersection with other fields, especially technology. Jasia Reichardt was Assistant Director at the Institute of Contemporary Art, London (ICA) 1963-1971, where she organized the exhibit Cybernetic Serendipity and wrote the book of the same name. She served as Director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery 1974-1976.

From the guide to the Jasia Reichardt archive of concrete and sound poetry, 1958-1975, (Getty Research Institute)

Biographical/Historical Note

Polish-born Jasia Reichardt has lived most of her life in England, where in the 1950s she was associated with the Gaberbocchus Common Room, a meeting place for artists and scientists. She has worked as an art writer, curator, and author of interdisciplinary studies about the relationship between literature and art or science and art. She was Assistant Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, from 1963 to 1971, where she curated two exhibitions of lasting impact: Between Poetry and Painting (1965) and Cybernetic Serendipity (1968). In 1971 and 1972, she worked for The Toymakers Co-operative soliciting artists to create original toys, a project funded by an American entrepreneur seeking new, more ingenious products. From 1974 to 1976 she was Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, after which she taught at various colleges, wrote for international art magazines, and independently curated exhibitions generally on the relationship between cybernetics and art. She has authored and edited several books, including Robots: Fact, Fiction and Prediction (1978), worked on a project about the visualization of mathematics, and curated the exhibition Electronically Yours (1998) for the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography.

From the guide to the Jasia Reichardt correspondence, 1956-1987, (The Getty Research Institute)