Building networks, broadening perspectives: Visiting Curators 2024

New impulses for Bremen’s art scene - the Visiting Curators exchange program organized by KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen reached its seventh round in November 2024. Five curators visited 25 artists in their studios over three days. The project offers Bremen artists the valuable opportunity to establish a dialog with internationally active curators and thus create networks beyond the local art scene.This can lead to new perspectives on their own practice and projects, promote their development and build multi-perspective networks.

“Stimulating discussions, enriching exchanges, I’m an absolute fan of the program,” praises artist Sarah Lüdemann (Beauham) after the visit by curator Sarah Schönewald to her studio in the Künstler:innenhaus. Together with Sarah Schönewald (curator of modern and contemporary art at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin), Eliane Odding (freelance curator of modern and contemporary art from the Netherlands), Jenny Graser (curator of contemporary art at the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Nele Kaczmarek (director of the Kunstverein Nürnberg - Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft) and Theresa Roessler (director of the Westfälischer Kunstverein Münster) were guests in Bremen.
The curators were invited by institutions involved in the Bremen art scene, this year by the Städtische Galerie, the Kunsthalle Bremen, the KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen, the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst and the Hochschule für Künste Bremen. Both curators and artists particularly appreciate the pleasant and appreciative exchange that Visiting Curators offers. It is a communicative format that enables a direct and personal dialog. Jenny Graser sums it up: “The intensive discussions with the artists were very enriching.” In conversation with the curators, the participating artists can test and differentiate how they talk about their practice, says artist Zainab Haidariy. According to artist Veronika Maier, the professional perspective of the curators also allows them to see their own artistic work with different eyes. This enabled her to identify areas that she wants to improve and in which she is keen to take action.
But it’s not just the artists who gain new insights from the visits:
“In addition to the expansion of personal networks, the exchange of ideas and the communication of different perspectives are among the valuable results of the encounters. In this way, the program has a great impact for everyone involved,” says Sarah Schönewald. Jenny Graser is enthusiastic about Bremen’s diverse and vibrant art scene and has gained a whole new impression of the city as a result of the visit. This means that both parties, artists and curators, can take away ideas for their work from Visiting Curators. Ideally, the contact established in Bremen will lead to a collaboration or ideas for projects can be passed on. Curator Eliane Odding sees great potential for contemporary art practice in an exchange such as Visiting Curators in the future.

• Jenny Graser

  … has been curator for contemporary art at the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin since 2020. There she curated the exhibitions Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt. Like a Spider in the Web, (2022), WORLD FRAMED. Contemporary Drawing Art of the Schering Stiftung in the Museum of Prints and Drawings (2023) and Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston – Plague and Protest (2024) among others. From 2002 to 2008 Graser studied art theory, media studies and modern history at the HBK Braunschweig and the TU Braunschweig. This was followed by a doctorate at the Free University of Berlin. After completing her doctorate, she worked from 2015 to 2019 first as a research trainee, and then as a research assistant at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt am Main.
  *(Proposed by Dr. Annett Reckert, curator for modern and contemporary art in the Kupferstichkabinett of the Kunsthalle Bremen)

• Nele Kaczmarek

  … is an art theoretician and has been the director of the Kunstverein Nürnberg – Albrecht Dürer Gesellschaft since May 2024. From 2016 to 2022, Kaczmarek worked as a curator at the Kunstverein Braunschweig, where she organized solo and group exhibitions featuring artists such as K.R.M. Mooney, Steve Bishop, Carolyn Lazard, Patricia L. Boyd and the Karrabing Film Collective. Alongside this, she taught at Braunschweig University of Art, (co-) curated projects at institutions including SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin, and Braunsfelder in Cologne, and also advised Tangente in St. Pölten/Vienna. After a curatorial fellowship in Seoul, South Korea, Kaczmarek has been working as the interim director of the IMAI—Inter Media Art Institute, Düsseldorf in 2023/2024, where she has collaborated with numerous other institutions such as the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and Videonale Bonn to initiate exhibitions and projects with artists including Becket MWN, Leyla Yenirce, Constance DeJong, and Dani and Sheilah ReStack.
  *(Proposed by Nadja Quante, Artistic Director/Curator of the Gallery in the Künstler:innenhaus Bremen)

• Eliane Odding

  … is a freelance curator and writer on modern and contemporary art. She has curated the exhibitions Nieuw Licht - Kunst in de Grote Kerk Alkmaar (2021), a format that invites contemporary artists to create site-specific works, Thomas Trum – Taking a Line for a Walk (2022), Nynke Koster - Common Ground (2023), Folkert de Jong – Dutch Mechanisms (2024), among others. She also curated exhibitions for various exhibition venues in the Netherlands, including Lisa Konno – The Porcelain Body at JAN Museum Amstelveen (2024) and Twist – Bastiaan Woudt at Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen (2022).
  (Proposed by Städtische Galerie Bremen)

• Theresa Roessler

  … is a curator and art historian. She will take over as director of the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster from September 2024. From 2020 to 2023, she was curator at the Kunstverein Freiburg. There she curated the exhibitions Mock Kings by Jala Wahid (2023), On the Brink of Remembering (2022) and Owls and Promises by Alex Ayed (2022), among others. In addition to her institutional work, Theresa Roessler curated independent projects in Vienna, Austria in 2023 and 2024. Her texts have recently appeared in Revista ARTA Magazine, Springerin, Camera Austria and PW Magazine. She studied Art History in Vienna, Art Studies and Media Philosophy, Curatorial Studies and Exhibition Design in Karlsruhe and Art Theory in Dublin.
  (Proposed by Christina Scheib, Curation and Coordination, Department of Art and Design, University of the Arts Bremen)

• Sarah Schönewald

  … has been Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin since 2023. She previously worked at various institutions of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz. She curated a series of special exhibitions in cooperation with the Würth Collection, including Anthony Caro. The Last Judgement Sculpture of the Würth Collection (2019) in the Gemäldegalerie. Until 2023, she worked at the Museum of Photography on the exhibition FOTOGAGA. Max Ernst and photography. After studying art history, art/art education and art and cultural mediation, she worked as a research assistant in a cooperation project between the University of Bremen, the University of Cologne and the Center for Artists’ Publications at the Museum Weserburg. She completed her doctorate at the University of Bremen in 2017.
  (Proposed by Dr. Anne Thurmann-Jajes, Head of the Centre for Artists’ Publications, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art Bremen)

Share In cooperation with

Visiting Curators is a joint project of the Bremen Artists’ Association BBK, the Bremen Artists’ Association, GEDOK, the KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen and Städtische Galerie Bremen. The format will take place for the seventh time in 2024 and is organized by KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen.

With kind support of