Albena Yaneva

Born 1972 in Bulgaria.

Earned her M. A. in Sociology at the University of Sofia (1996) and her DEA at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales in Paris (1997). Her dissertation dealt with museum installations in contemporary art and was completed at the Center of Sociology of Innovation at Ecole des Mines de Paris (2001).

From 2001 to 2003 she worked at the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin in the research group “The Common Languages of Art and Science”.

In 2004 she was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.

During her fellowship at Akademie Schloss Solitude, she will be completing her book “The Failed Extensions of Whitney Museum of American Art: A Natural Experiment in Exploring Design and Modernism”. The book deals with the history of several unrealised architectural projects for the extension of the Whitney Museum in New York. Drawing on an ethnographical description of “architecture in the making” in the office of its last architect Rem Koolhaas, and on extensive archival work, she will explore the changing views of art and architecture, of museum and public debate.