Elena Filipovic.
American-born art historian and curator Elena Filipovic has been named director of Kunsthalle Basel. She succeeds Adam Szymczyk, who in November was named artistic director of Documenta 14, which will take place in summer 2017. Filipovic is currently senior curator of WIELS Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels. She will take up her new post Nov. 1.
With Szymczyk, Filipovic, 42, co-curated the 5th Berlin Biennial (2008) and, with Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, co-edited The Biennial Reader: Anthology on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (2010). She has curated a number of traveling retrospectives, including “Marcel Duchamp: A Work that is not a Work ‘of Art'” (2008-2009), “Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Specific Objects without Specific Form” (2010-2011), “Alina Szapocznikow: Sculpture Undone, 1955-1972,” co-curated with Joanna Mytkowska (2011-2012), and “Franz Erhard Walther: The Body Decides” (2014).
She has also organized solo exhibitions with artists such as Petrit Halilaj, Leigh Ledare, Klara Lidén and Lorna Macintyre. Filipovic holds a doctorate in art history from Princeton University.
Kunsthalle Basel was inaugurated in 1872 and was renovated in 2004 by architects Miller & Maranta.
