Panel discussion on the relevance of art associations

archive-single-event-detail.php

Keynote: Beatrice von Bismarck (Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig)
Discussion: Elke Gruhn (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Kunstvereine), Hendrike Nagel (Kunstverein Schwerin), Thibaut de Ruyter (curator), Albert Weis (artist).
Moderation: Vincent Schier (curator)

Increasing populism, budget cuts in culture, the recent resurgence of debates on artistic freedom and increased difficulty in accessing free spaces for art pose particular challenges for art associations and artists alike.
The invited experts from the fields of arts and science, culture and exhibition practice will discuss the current relevance of the over 200-year-old institution ‘Kunstverein’ for artists and societies and discuss their possible and necessary reactions to current problems.
The focus will be on questions such as: how contemporary are art associations, what tasks can and should they fulfil for artists and societies in the contemporary art world? How can they continue to promote locally inclusive, participatory and social exchange between art and the public in light of the increasing shift of art to the digital realm? How ecologically and socially sustainable can and must art organisations act? What (political, financial, structural) dependencies and what new challenges are they facing now and in the years to come?

Beatrice von Bismarck‘s work on the curatorial has focussed, among other things, on the changes in institutional conditions. She has focussed on procedures and strategies that make it possible to establish different types of internal and external relationships. In this context, she was a long-standing member of the board of the Neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin and the exhibition advisory board of Brühlsche Terrassen, Dresden and worked with artists such as Andrea Fraser, Christian Philipp Müller, Julie Ault, Andreas Siekmann and Dorit Margreiter.

Elke Gruhn was director of the Nassauischer Kunstverein Wiesbaden between 2002 and 2023 and was responsible for the reorientation, expansion and internationalisation of the institution, which is rich in tradition and run on a voluntary basis. She has worked on the use of quality management structures in art associations. She has been a member of the board of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Deutscher Kunstvereine (ADKV) for 12 years, where she is primarily responsible for international affairs. In addition to numerous expert committees, she was a member of the jury for the funding programmes Exhibitions, Documentations and Artists’ Catalogues between 2017 and 2023 and a member of the Board of Trustees of Stiftung Kunstfond from 2020-23.

Hendrike Nagel (*1989, Lübeck) is director of the Kunstverein Schwerin and founder of the platform (REPERTOIRE). Her curatorial practice focusses on collaborative practices and the development of sustainable forms of exhibition making and institutional work. She has previously worked for various project spaces, galleries and institutions, including Kunsthalle Portikus, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Schinkel Pavillon, and documenta fifteen.

Thibaut de Ruyter is a French-German curator, architect and critic. He lives in Berlin. Trained as an architect, he curates exhibitions on a conceptual, technical and spatial level, conceiving not only the content but also the design of his projects. His interests lie in new media and its archaeology, the relationship between art and architecture (especially through a critique of modernism) and the art scene in post-Soviet countries, particularly in Central Asia.
One of his latest exhibitions, co-curated with Inke Arns, Was ist Kunst, IRWIN?, was shown at Hartware MedienKunstverein (HMKV), Dortmund in 2023.

Vincent Schier is a curator and works on ecological and social sustainability and social participation. As artistic director of the Kunstverein Göttingen, he was responsible for curating the 2021 and 2022 annual programmes. Previously, he was a curator at the Kunsthaus Dresden and worked for the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), where he is now on the board. Vincent Schier has realised projects for Kunsthalle Exnergasse Vienna, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Schwules Museum Berlin, and KW Institute for Contemporary Art and has taught at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig and Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule in Halle, among others.

Albert Weis lives and works in Berlin. From 1989 to 1997 he studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Among other honours, Weis was awarded the City of Munich’s Visual Arts Prize in 1999, the Bavarian State Prize for Fine Arts in 2001 and a scholarship at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles in 2009. Since 2018, he has been on the board of the Deutscher Künstlerbund, from 2019 to 2022 as spokesman of the board. In 2020-2022, Weis initiated the Neustart Kultur funding programme for visual artists together with other associations. His installations and works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, including at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, Haus der Kunst Munich, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Sprengel Museum Hanover, Centre d’art Passerelle, Brest, Kunstmuseen Krefeld/Haus Lange, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and IMMA Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.

Verbundene Ausstellung: