HAMBURG.- With the internationally renowned curator Joanna Warsza, the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg and the Kunsthaus Hamburg are carrying forward the project on art in public space.

Taking up her position as Hamburg’s third City Curator in October 2024, Joanna Warsza will foster the development of art in public spaces and initiate discussions on urban and social issues with artistic projects: “Particularly in the current challenging political times, I believe that art helps us to overcome isolation and division. I am delighted to become the City Curator of Hamburg and to lead this unique project without any walls, alongside the artists, citizens, city representatives and the Kunsthaus Hamburg team, embarking together on a fascinating journey from the cosmos to the commons towards the idea of a planetary public sphere.”

Joanna Warsza is a curator, writer, editor and educator from Warsaw living in Berlin. She has often worked at the intersection of art and the public realm, fostering art as a language which is visually striking, politically necessary and socially engaged. Her topics span the cusp of art, activism, political desire and performativity, situated knowledges, the questions of asymmetries, feminist histories, decolonisation in Eastern Europe, memory work and the idea of what is planetary. She has curated several biennales and large scale projects such as the recently opened art parcours Radical Playgrounds: From Competition to Collaboration at the Gropius Bau, the Polish pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale with Malgorzata Mirga-Tas and the Georgian pavilion at the 55th edition. She was an associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale, artistic director of Public Art Munich 2018 and co-curated the 3rd and 4th Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo. Between 2014 and 2024 she was the programme director of CuratorLab at the Konstfack University of Arts in Stockholm.

The choice was made by a seven-member jury consisting of Ulf Aminde (artist and professor, Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee), Ulrich Genth (artist and member of the Kunstkommission in Hamburg), Julia Jung (art in public space manager, Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg), Gilly Karjevsky (visiting professor for social design, University of Fine Arts Hamburg), Brigitte Kölle (curator, Hamburger Kunsthalle and member of the Kunstkommission in Hamburg), Anna Nowak (managing and artistic director, Kunsthaus Hamburg) and Misal Adnan Yildiz (co-director, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden). Joanna Warsza convinced them with her innovative and critical curatorial approaches, which she has demonstrated in a range of significant projects related to public space, performativity and representation. The jury was inspired by her commitment to sustainable structures and the advancement of policies favouring ecological protection alongside economic growth as well as her vision for a future in which Hamburg remains a vibrant, inclusive and resilient metropolis.

The City Curator project marks yet another important step in the history of public art in Hamburg. In 1981, the Hanseatic city replaced the Art in Architecture programme in place until then with the Art in Public Space programme. This was Hamburg’s response to cultural and social change and the related shift in the demands placed on the city as a space for living and interaction. By opening up the urban space to independent visual arts projects, a significant step toward a democratic shaping of urban culture was achieved. The programme’s experimental and progressive focus has thus set decisive new standards and will continue along this line. Based on numerous temporary or permanent artworks and projects alongside curated exhibitions, topics of social relevance have been addressed and introduced into public debates.

The aim of the City Curator programme is to draw even more attention to Hamburg’s public art and to further increase its impact on urban society. In order to consolidate the Art in Public Space programme in the long term, the City Curator project has been relaunched as a cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and Media Hamburg and the Kunsthaus Hamburg. It will be continued under the auspices of the Kunsthaus and has been extended to a term of five years.