Los Angeles-born curator Elena Filipovic has been named the next director of the Kunstmuseum Basel. Filipovic comes to the institution from the Kunsthalle Basel, where she was director since 2014; she was the first woman to lead this museum in the 150 years since its founding. She will take up her new position no later than June 1, 2024, while retaining her position at the Kunsthalle Basel. Filipovic succeeds Joseph Helfenstein, who led the museum since 2016 and is retiring. Deputy Director Anita Haldemann will act as interim director, with the assistance of the museum management, in the event of a break between Helfenstein’s departure and Filipovic’s arrival.
“Elena Filipovic convinced the committee with her vision for the future of our museum as well as her professional background, her leadership qualities and her contagious enthusiasm for the whole of art history, which allows her to to make the arts appealing to people from all walks of life,” Felix Uhlmann, chairman of the Kunstmuseum Basel art committee, said in a statement.
In his new role, Filipovic will take care of the three sites of the Kunstmuseum Basel: Hauptbau (Main building), Neubau (Extension) and Gegenwart (Museum of Contemporary Art).
During his stay at the Kunsthalle in Basel, Filipovic supervised more than sixty exhibitions, among which major surveys of artists such as Michael Armitage, Dora Budor, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Yngve Holen, Anne Imhof, Deana Lawson, Wong Ping, Andra Ursuta, Raphaela Vogel, Anicka Yi, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Before assuming the direction of the Kunsthalle Basel, Filipovic was for five years senior curator at the Wiels (then Wiels Contemporary Art Center) in Brussels. In 2022, she organized the Croatian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale and, from 2009 to 2011, she supervised the Satellite program at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. In 2008, with Adam Szymczyk, she co-organized the Fifth Berlin Biennale. Filipovic has also curated a number of traveling retrospectives, including “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without a Specific Form” (2010) and “Marcel Duchamp: A Work That Is Not a Work of Art” (2008) . She got her doctorate. from Princeton University.
“The art historian in me couldn’t be more thrilled and also more deeply honored to have the opportunity to lead one of the world’s greatest art museums in a city so strongly committed to the arts, and thus to continue the remarkable work carried out by Josef Helfenstein,” said Filipovic. “I look forward to this new task of shaping the future of the museum so that its rich history and unparalleled collection remain alive in the public consciousness with new content and stories. As someone who fundamentally believes in the vital civic role of museums, it is exhilarating to reflect on the Kunstmuseum Basel and its possibilities, and above all on how it can respond to a world that is becoming increasingly complex.
