PARIS.- The International Association of Art Critics has elected its new President, Dr. Marek Bartelik, during the General Assembly that took place in Asunción, Paraguay, on October 20th, 2011. Dr. Bartelik succeeds Yacouba Konaté from Ivory Coast, who served as AICA’s President since October 2008. Dr. Bartelik is the XVth President of the Association. Previous Presidents include: James Johnson Sweeney (USA, 1957-1963), René Berger (Switzerland, 1969-1975), Jacques Leenhardt (France, 1990-1996), and Henry Meyric Hughes (United Kingdom, 2002-2008).

Dr. Bartelik was born in Olsztyn, Poland, and in 1985 moved to the United States, where he currently resides. He holds a Master of Science degree in Civil Engineering from Columbia University and a PhD in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He has been teaching modern and contemporary art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York since 1996. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Yale and MIT. Dr. Bartelik is a Graduate Critic-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He has lectured nationally and internationally at, among other places, MoMA in New York and the Boston Museum of Art in Boston (USA), the Polish Academy of Science in Warsaw (Poland), the Municipal Museum in The Hague (Holland), the Museo National de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and the Pinacoteca in São Paulo (Brazil). He is a regular contributor to Artforum International, for which he wrote reviews from over twenty countries on five continents.

Accepting the current Presidency of AICA International, Dr. Bartelik stated in Asunción: “It is a great honor to be elected AICA’s new President; it is a great responsibility as well. I look forward to working with all our members on strengthening AICA as a vital platform for voicing important ideas about art and art criticism in our society. I would like to thank AICA’s members for giving me this unique opportunity to serve as the organization’s fifteenth President. With near 5000 art critics in over 60 countries around the world, AICA will continue setting highest standards of excellence in criticism.