John Baldessari is one of the most influential artists in the Post-War American scene. A pioneer in Conceptual Art, Baldessari has, through exhibitions and through his teaching, been a central figure in the emergence of California as a major source of energy and new ideas in the visual arts. His work as an artist is distinguished by a relentless questioning of the ways in which works of art convey meaning. He is represented in most of the world's major contemporary and modern museum collections. His work has been presented in hundreds of shows and major retrospective exhibitions, both in the United States and in Europe. In addition to teaching at UCLA, Baldessari serves on the board of several not-for-profit institutions and foundations.

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, China, and is the most recognized artist of Chinese decent. His practice draws on a wide variety of symbols, narratives, traditions and materials such as fengshui, Chinese medicine, dragons, roller coasters, computers, vending machines and gunpowder. Among the many honors bestowed upon Cai Guo-Qiang are the prestigious Golden Lion Award at the 48th Biennale di Venezia and the 2001 CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts. He was also selected as a finalist for the 1996 Hugo Boss Prize. Cai Quo-Qiang also curated the inaugural China pavilion at the 51st Biennale di Venezia, 2005.

Vishakha N. Desai is President and CEO of the Asia Society, an international educational organization dedicated to strengthening connections between the peoples of Asia and the United States. Appointed president in 2004, Dr. Desai has served in various leadership positions at the Asia Society, most recently as Senior Vice President and as Director of its museum. She is widely recognized as a leader in the museum field for developing dynamic presentations of contemporary works by Asian and Asian American artists and for conceiving innovative exhibitions of traditional Asian art within strong cultural contexts.

Prior to joining the Asia Society in 1990, Dr. Desai was a curator at The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She received her B.A. in political science from Bombay University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Asian Art History from the University of Michigan. Dr. Desai served as the President of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in 1998-99 and was on the Board from 1995-2000. Dr. Desai is married to Robert B. Oxnam, a China scholar, who was the Asia Society's president from 1981 to 1992.

Bruce W. Ferguson is an independent curator and critic who has worked internationally for more than thirty years. His recent projects include conceptualizing and directing a new institute at Arizona State University - F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) @ ASU in Phoenix, Arizona. Ferguson previously served as the Dean, School of Arts at Colombia University; President and Executive Director of the New York Academy of Art; and is the founding Director and first biennial curator of SITE Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Ferguson has curated more than 35 exhibitions for institutions such as the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, the Barbican Art Gallery in London, the Winnipeg and Vancouver Art Galleries in Canada, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. He also organized exhibitions in the international biennales of São Paulo, Sydney, Venice and Istanbul.

A prolific writer, Ferguson has written for art publications like Canadian Art, Art Forum, Art in America, Art + Text, Flash Art, Bomb Magazine, Art Press, Borders Crossing and Parachute.

Along with Reesa Greenberg and Sandy Nairne, he received a Getty Senior Research Fellowship grant, which resulted in the publication of a seminal anthology of essays on the theories of exhibitions, titled Thinking About Exhibitions (Routledge: 1996).

Bruce received his B.A. in Art History from the University of Saskatchewan and his M.A. in Communications from McGill University in Montreal.

Lady Elena Foster, Chairman of the Tate International Council, is the founder of Ivory Press -- London-based fine-art publishing venture dedicated to the production of special collaborations with major contemporary painters and sculptors including Eduardo Chillida, Anish Kapoor, Anthony Caro and Richard Long. The latest project of her publishing house is C International Photography Magazine, a multi-lingual publication that had its debut in January 2006.

An academic psychologist by training, Lady Foster of Thames Bank (the former Prof. Dr. Elena Ochoa), is a graduate of Madrid University. She was a Fulbright Scholar at UCLA and a visiting research scholar at the universities of Cambridge, Chicago, Kraków, Hamburg and Pennsylvania, among others. She was Titular Professor of Psychopathology at the Complutense University of Madrid for over twenty years and, as a Spanish journalist, worked for TVE, Radio Nacional, the newspaper El Pais, among others. Lady Foster is married to the architect Lord Norman Foster, with whom she has a daughter and a son.

Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1956, Ramiro Martínez has been the director of Museo Tamayo since 2002. His studies include Business administration in Tecnologico de Monterrey at Saint Mary's University and Applied Research at Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr.Martinez worked in various capacities at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey and was its director before accepting his current position at the Tamayo. His various exhibition projects include El Hechizo de Oaxaca, Julio Galán, Leonora Carrington, Jalisco, Genio y Maestría, Daniel Senise, La Mirada Iluminante, Louise Bourgeois, La Elegancia de la Ironía, Teodoro González de León, Isamu Noguchi y la Figura, Inside Out, New Chinese Art, Pierre Alechinsky, Jesús Rafael Soto, David Salle, 1990-2000, Manuel Álvarez Bravo and Henri Cartier-Bresson, among others.

Raymond McGuire is the Global Co-head of Investment Banking in Citigroup. Previously, he was the worldwide
Co-chairman of Morgan Stanley's Mergers and Acquisitions Group based in New York. A collector of contemporary art, Mr. McGuire serves on several boards, including The International Center of Photography (President), the Studio Museum in Harlem (Chairman) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (Executive Committee). McGuire also serves on the boards of The Enterprise Foundation, The Joseph & Claire Flom Foundation and the New York Presbyterian Hospital.

David A. Ross has more than 30 years experience as an art museum professional and has served as director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Noted for his work with emerging artists and new media, Mr. Ross has been involved in the organization and jurying process of major international exhibitions including the Venice Biennale, Documenta and The Carnegie International.

Mr. Ross is a Trustee of the Studio Museum in Harlem and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Anaphiel Foundation. He serves on the Curatorial Committee of the CRT Foundation in Turin, Italy, and on the Curatorial Advisory Committee of La Caixa in Barcelona, Spain. He is an active member of the board of Rhizome, a new media organization associated with the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. He is currently the editor-at-large for www.flypmedia.com.

One of the leading and most wide-ranging artists of her generation, Kiki Smith makes sculpture of and about the body in materials as diverse as bronze, paper and wax. In the late 1970s and early 1980s she was associated with the artist's collective Collaborative Projects, Inc. (Colab), and participated in the celebrated Times Square Show of 1980. Smith's work has been presented in solo and group shows in major museums around the world. She is also represented in the permanent collection of numerous museums, including MoMA, The Whitney, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. A major traveling retrospective of Smith's prints and multiples appeared at The Museum of Modern Art in the winter of 2003-2004.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His work defies media-based description, as his practice combines traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action. Winner of the 2005 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum, his exhibition there consisted of a pirate radio station located in the museum's rotunda. Tiravanija was also awarded the Benesse by the Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum in Japan and the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Lucelia Artist Award.

He has had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum Bojmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam that then was presented in Paris and London. Tiravanija is on the faculty of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and is a founding member of Utopia Station, a collective project of artists, art historians, and curators. Tiravanija is also President of an educational-ecological project known as The Land Foundation, located in Chiangmai, Thailand, and is part of Plan B, a collective alternative space located in Bangkok-- where he maintains his primary residence and studio.

Hans Ulrich Obrist was born in Zurich. In 1993, he founded the Museum Robert Walser and directed the Migrateurs program at the ARC/ Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris where he served as a curator for contemporary art until spring of 2006. Significant monographic exhibitions co-curated there include: Olafur Eliasson, Philippe Parreno, Steve McQueen, Jonas Mekas, Yoko Ono, Anri Sala and Doug Aitken. He has co-curated major international shows such as Manifesta I, Rotterdam, 1996, the 1st Berlin Biennial, 1998 (with K. Biesenbach and N. Spector), Utopia Station (with M. Nesbit and R. Tiravanija), 50th Venice Biennale, 2003, Haus der Kunst, Munich 2004, Dakar Biennial, 2004 and in 2005 the first Moscow Biennial.

Hans Ulrich has also created innovative exhibitions outside the contemporary gallery format notably Retrace your steps: Remember tomorrow, Sir John Soane Museum, London 1999-2000, Do it (more than 30 versions from 1994 to present) and take me I'm yours, 1995. Accompanying his curatorial projects, he has edited the writings of Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert and George, Maria Lassnig and Leon Golub and is the editor of a series of artist books published by Walther Koenig including projects by John Baldessari, Mathew Barney, Christian Boltanski, Peter Fischli/ David Weiss and Douglas Gordon. The first volume of his ongoing interview project was recently collected in Hans Ulrich Obrist Interviews (Milan: Edizioni Charta, 2003). Since 1997 he has been editor in chief of the hybrid artist pages Point d'Ironie, published by Agnes b. Hans Ulrich is also a frequent curator for the museum in progress, Vienna and professor at Facolta delle Arti, IUAV in Venice.

Mr. Obrist joined the Serpentine Gallery in London as the Co-Director, Exhibitions and Programs and Director of International Programs. He currently lives and works in London.

Prof. Jerry Wind is the Lauder Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, the Director of the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management and the Academic Director of The Wharton School Fellows Program. Professor Wind is the founder of the Executive MBA Program at The Wharton School and is widely known as one of the world's foremost authorities on marketing and competitive business strategies. Prof. Wind has contributed to over 250 professional and academic publications and has authored as many as 20 books on the subject. He is a trustee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and an avid collector of art.