Elena Filipovic has been appointed director of the Kunstmuseum Basel, replacing Josef Helfenstein who was appointed in 2016. She will take up her post in June next year, setting the agenda for one of Switzerland’s most important museums.
Filipovic is director and chief curator of the Kunsthalle Basel where she has organized more than 60 exhibitions since 2014, including exhibitions dedicated to Michael Armitage, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Yngve Holen and Anne Imhof.
In 2008, with Adam Szymczyk, she organized the fifth Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art. In 2022 she curated the Croatian pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale.
Felix Uhlmann, Chairman of the Art Committee of the Kunstmuseum Basel, says: “Filipovic convinced the [interview] committee with his vision for the future of our museum as well as his professional background, his leadership qualities and his contagious enthusiasm for the whole of art history.
According to the Princeton University website, Filipovic’s doctoral thesis, The apparently marginal activities of Marcel Duchamp, “focuses on a series of fugitive operations (or ‘activities’ as its title calls them) that Marcel Duchamp instigated between 1913 and 1969”.
The Kunstmuseum Basel is one of the oldest museums in the world, with origins dating back to the 17th century, and home to over 300,000 works spanning eight centuries.
