The Kunsthalle Wien has announced that British curator Michelle Cotton will be its next director. Cotton, who is currently Director of Programming at the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, will take up her new role in the summer of 2024. She will succeed Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić and Sabina Sabolović. The trio, who together with Ana Dević form the curatorial collective What, How & for Whom (WHW) based in Zagreb, Croatia, took over leadership of the organization in 2019 but were forced out earlier this year after the city government turned down their re-application for the job.
“I am delighted to have found in Michelle Cotton an internationally renowned curator for the Kunsthalle Wien. With her work to date, she has demonstrated foresight and intuition, both on virulent socio-political issues and on artists* who, with great commitment, reflect our changing times in the mirror of the art,” said Veronica Kaup-Hasler, Vienna City Councilor for Culture, in a statement.
Born in Preston, England, Cotton previously ran the Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn, Germany from 2015 to 2019. Prior to that, she was chief curator at Firstsite contemporary art center in Colchester, England from 2010 to 2015. Previous roles include curator at Norwich Gallery, adnd program manager at S1 Artspace, Sheffield, and Cubitt, London. Cotton holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature from King’s College London and a postgraduate degree in Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Arts.
Cotton was chosen from thirty-seven applicants in a second round of selection. The first round included twenty candidates, including WHW, whose ouster led to the resignation of a KHW board member, as well as criticism from Vienna’s arts community. The city maintained that the candidates in the first round “did not meet the criteria”.
“[The] The KHW team has not only faced the pandemic, but also a major organizational restructuring at all levels, including the decision to integrate KHW into the new Stadt Wien Kunst holding,” Sabolović wrote in a Facebook post. at the time. “To this day, our shortcomings have never been explained to us, either by the media or by the public, in a way that we understand.”
