June 2010

Charles Ryder was born in New York in 1947. He grew up in suburban New Jersey in a bohemian household, one which held books and learning in high esteem. He attended Fountain Valley School, a progressive boarding school set on the rolling prairie near Colorado Springs, Colorado. An Honor Role student, he edited the school newspaper and captained the Track (Athletics) team.

Ryder returned to the East coast for his undergraduate degree, studying psychology, and later fine art, at Middlebury College in Vermont. He was greatly influenced by the teaching and the work of painter and printmaker Professor Bruce Muirhead. Ryder graduated from Middlebury with highest honours in 1970.

New York

His education continued at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture and Planning in New York, where he was taught by Aldo Giurgola, Robert Stern, Kenneth Frampton and Rem Koolhaas. At Columbia Ryder published a samizdat newsletter, organised bewildering parties, and produced a one-off ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ lecture series.

Ryder’s professional career began with a series of freelance jobs building architectural scale models, notably for Davis Brody Bond, where he learned much about the practice of urban architecture. He was an informal member of the independent design consultancy Concept: International Visionaries, working from a former textile loft at Bleeker and La Guardia Streets in Greenwich Village.

Ryder’s growing professional network led to a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, first as a model maker for design development of the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, then as a staff designer working on exhibitions, permanent installations and master plans. He assisted with the New York installation of Treasures of Tutankhamun, and designed 5,000 Years of Korean Art, and Renaissance of Islam: Art of the Mamluks. Ryder’s work expanded to include consulting projects for the Guggenheim Museum, the Frick Collection, Yale University Art Gallery and the Smithsonian Museum Travelling Exhibition Service.

Kuwait

Ryder left the Met to design the Museum of Islamic Art of the Kuwait National Museum for Sheikh Nasser al-Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah. The project team of 75 museum professionals created a new permanent installation of Sheikh Nasser’s collection in record time, building the exhibition, and cataloguing, conserving and installing over 700 objects in 10 months from the start to the opening in February 1983. A second phase was completed in 1985. The installations were destroyed in the final days of the first Gulf War, though the collection was safe in Iraq, having been seized and taken to Baghdad soon after the invasion of Kuwait.

London

The international travel and professional contacts deriving from the Kuwait project enabled Ryder to fulfil his ambition to live in Europe. He settled in Brixton, London in 1989, working as an associate at museum designers Jasper Jacob & Associates and doing freelance work for Plowden & Smith, London’s leading art restoration, conservation and installation service.

Commissions on his own account followed, including the gallery of European Sculpture 1750-1920 at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the History Room at the Iveagh Bequest Kenwood for English Heritage, A Picasso Bestiary for the London Borough of Croydon, and Virtue and Vision: Sculpture and Scotland 1540-1990 for the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. In the run-up to the Millenium, Ryder was a consultant to Zaha Hadid Architects, as part of the team developing the Millennium Dome Mind Pavilion.

In 1999, at the invitation of Prof Bruce Russell, Ryder became Curator of the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston University London, managing the gallery’s programme of exhibitions, concerts and educational events. Notable exhibitions included one-person shows for Martin Pace, Chris Jennings, Charlotte Moore, and Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith, and 5 x 20 (a survey of abstract painting) as well as collaborations with Grand Valley State University in Michigan, and British Petroleum (exploring art and science). Ryder's crowning achievement at Kingston was ‘70/2000: The Road to Meikle Seggie, a huge exhibition honouring Richard Demarco on his 70th birthday.

In 2003 Ryder established the annual Kingston Contemporary Art Open, now in its sixth year [now re-cast as the Kingston Summer Art Season].

Winchester

When the job at Kingston came to an end, Ryder returned to freelance practice, designing websites and exhibition catalogues, teaching, and curating (up to early 2009) transit station, a touring international live art "exhibition as event", devised at the Picker Gallery in 2003 by Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith. transit station has taken place in London, Berlin and Edinburgh, with the next event scheduled for April 2010 at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art, Copenhagen.

Ryder served for a time as Curator for Art & Culture at Diamond Light Source, the country's biggest science project in 60 years. Ryder assisted the artist in residence scheme, devising a programme of artistic and cultural events, and developing funding strategies and long-term partnerships in the arts and sciences.

Now

Ryder now commutes between the UK and his holiday home in France. He maintains a lively freelance design practice in England, catering to artists, musicians and cultural institutions. He teaches Museology at the University of Portsmouth, and is an active part-time painter.

Eugène de Rastignac, London 2008-2009