Renée Ridgway is an artist, free-lance curator and writer, based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since completing her studies in fine art at the Rhode Island School of Design, (BFA) and Piet Zwart Institute (MA), she has exhibited widely in the Netherlands and abroad (P.S.1 MoMA Hotel New York, Centraal Museum Utrecht, Gouda Museum) She has made numerous public presentations at various conferences and forums and taught at several universities in the Netherlands and abroad. From 2005-6 she served on the board of the former Gate Foundation, whose artists archive and library were given as a gift to the Van Abbemuseum, where in 2007 she organised a panel as part of the Be(com)ing Dutch caucus, entitled Gate Foundation- Past, Present and Future. In 2009 Ridgway will organise ‘Negotiating Equity’, a collaborative project at DAI, (Dutch Art Institute) involving the n.e.w.s. platform and her contributors.

Ridgway’s curatorial and collaborational practice has investigated alter egos and constructed identities- Migrating Identity-Identifying the Migrant 2001, cat., the unseen other in society- Migrating Identity-Transmission/Reconstruction 2004, cat., sovereignty- (Third Space in the Fourth World 2003, cat.) and the boundaries of otherness- Another Publication 2007, cat. (available at Revolver Books) Ridgway's writings have been published in MITR, Paraeducation-The Metropolitan Complex, Pages Supplement and the Amsterdam Weekly while maintaining her website: http://reneeridgway.net

As an artist Ridgway is presently preparing the latest installment of her 10-year 'Manhattan Project', 'Beaver, Wampum, Hoes'- a series of installations and public interventions at various locations in and around NYC and the Netherlands in 2009. This focuses on the value of the contemporary ‘cultural currency’ of Dutchness, in relation to the Dutch colonial past (US, Indonesia, South Africa, Suriname).

Ridgway is a co-initiator of n.e.w.s.