Feedback & conversation: 5 curators visit 32 artists

Inspiring conversations, new perspectives, honest reflection: this November, the KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen organized the Visiting Curators exchange program for the eighth time in a row. Five curators from England, Germany, and the USA visited 32 Bremen-based artists in their studios over a total of four days. The project provides artists access to professional discussions with internationally active curators. These encounters can help artists to establish professional connections beyond the regional art scene. At the same time, opportunities arise for inspiration to see their own artistic work from a new perspective. Projects can be initiated, new perspectives revealed, and diverse networks developed.

This year’s guests in Bremen were Olivia Aherne (curator, Chisenhale Gallery, London), Lisa Le Feuvre (curator, author, editor, speaker, Holt/Smith Foundation, Santa Fe), Anna Nowak (curator, Kunsthaus Hamburg), Junia Thiede (curator, Kunstverein Braunschweig), and Ilka Voermann (director of the graphic arts collection, Berlinische Galerie). The curators were invited by institutions involved in the Bremen art scene, this year by the Städtische Galerie Bremen, the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Stiftung, the Hochschule für Künste, the Kunsthalle und Kunstmuseum Bremerhaven, and the KH Künstler:innenhaus.

The reasons why artists participate in Visiting Curators are varied. Above all, they appreciate the opportunity to discuss their artistic practice or specific projects intensively and eye-to-eye, to gain an outside perspective, and to expand their networks. Artist Kirsten Johannsen participated for the first time this year and sees Visiting Curators as “a safe space for open reflection, where conceptual questions and creative work processes were presented and discussed.” Artist Toni Ehrhardt also emphasizes the importance of inviting participants from outside Bremen. They can carry the positions of artists working in Bremen beyond the city limits.

According to Ilka Voermann, Visiting Curators offers curators the opportunity to gain valuable insight into Bremen’s art scene. The participating curators are enthusiastic about the diversity of artistic practice and studio opportunities in the city. Voermann sums it up: “In addition to the intensive discussions with the artists, it was extremely interesting for me to get to know the different places where artistic work is done in Bremen.” Lisa Le Feuvre describes Bremen in this context as a “vibrant space for artmaking.” Olivia Aherne also highlights the wide range of artistic works she was able to engage with as part of Visiting Curators. At the same time, all participants emphasize the importance of the program for Bremen artists, many of whom would like to participate again next year.

• Olivia Aherne

  …is a curator based in London, UK. As the Curator at Chisenhale Gallery, London, she’s developed new commissions by Claudia Pagès Rabal, Simnikiwe Buhlungu, and Alia Farid, among others, and has edited new award-winning artist books including those by Bruno Zhu and Joshua Leon (Mousse Publishing, 2024). In her previous role as the Curator at Nottingham Contemporary, she curated the first UK solo exhibitions by Carolyn Lazard, Meriem Bennani and Mélanie Matranga. In 2018, she was awarded the NEON Curatorial Award in partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery, London and participated in the inaugural Shanghai Biennial Curator’s Lab. She writes for publications including Art Monthly and Mousse, and is a visiting tutor on the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.

• Lisa Le Feuvre

  …is a curator, writer, editor, public speaker, and arts advocate. Her early work focused on dance music and London’s club scene. Currently, she is the inaugural Executive Director of the Holt/Smithson Foundation, supporting the legacies of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. She built the foundation from the ground up, working on exhibitions, publications, artist commissions, and educational programs from New Mexico. From 2010 to 2017, she led the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, overseeing research, collections, and exhibitions. She previously directed the contemporary art program at the National Maritime Museum and worked with Tate Britain, Serpentine, and The Photographers’ Gallery.

• Anna Nowak

  …is Managing and Artistic Director at Kunsthaus Hamburg since 2023. She studied art history, East Asian art history and ethnology at the universities of Heidelberg, Paris and Berlin as well as cultural management in Berlin. At dOCUMENTA (13) she realized over twenty artistic projects. Subsequently, she supervised international exhibition participations of highly regarded artists such as Anna Boghiguian, Wael Shawky or Walid Raad at the gallery Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg / Beirut (2013-2016). At the Kunstverein in Hamburg she initiated the first monographic exhibitions of Georgia Gardner Gray, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme (2017-2018) in Germany. Since 2019, she has been curator at Kunsthaus Hamburg, focusing on transculturality, digitality, and biodiversity.

• Junia Thiede

  …has been curator at the Kunstverein Braunschweig since October 2024. From 2020 to 2024, she was the Artistic Director at Fluentum, a Berlin-based institution with a focus on video art and film. In this role, she organized numerous solo and group exhibitions, including new productions and publications with artists such as Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, Loretta Fahrenholz, Margaret Honda, Nina Könnemann, D’Ette Nogle, Richard Sides, Michael E. Smith, Peter Wächtler, and Jiajia Zhang. Prior to that, she worked for institutions such as the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main, and the Gesellschaft für aktuelle Kunst in Bremen.

• Dr. Ilka Voermann

  …studied art history, classical archaeology, and modern and contemporary history in Münster and Mainz. From 2011 to 2012, she worked as a research assistant and associate researcher at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, where she was responsible for the exhibition Willi Baumeister International. Between 2014 and 2017, she served as a curatorial fellow at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, actively involved in the planning of the exhibition Inventur–Art in Germany, 1943–55. As a curator at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt from 2017 to 2022, she realized exhibitions such as Art for No One. 1933–1945 and Chagall. World in Turmoil. Since August 2022, Ilka Voermann has been the head of the prints and drawings collection at the Berlinische Galerie.

Share In cooperation with

Visiting Curators is a joint project of the Berufsverbands Bildender Künstler*innen Bremen, BBK, the Female Artists’ Association of Bremen, GEDOK, the KH Künstler:innenhaus Bremen and Städtische Galerie Bremen. All professional artists who work primarily in Bremen and have completed their studies at an art college or can demonstrate that they work professionally as artists are invited to apply.