The Berlin-born curator has worked in New York for a long time and focuses on transdisciplinary and time-based art.
Jenny Schlenzka will take over the management of the Gropius-Bau from September.Berlin Festival/Agnalis Field
The Berlin-born cultural scientist and curator Jenny Schlenzka will take over the management of the Gropius-Bau from September 2023. This was announced by the Berliner Festspiele on Thursday afternoon. The decision was made by the supervisory board of the federal cultural events in Berlin, following a suggestion by festival director Matthias Pees.
The head of Performance Space New York, who is currently still based in the USA, succeeds Stephanie Rosenthal, who has headed the house since February 2018 and will take over as director of the Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi from September. Schlenzka, who also helped to set up the performance area of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), has made an important contribution to the ongoing diversification of New York’s cultural landscape in recent years and wants the interdisciplinary, performative and expand the thematic approaches of their predecessor in the house.
starting point art
According to the announcement, Minister of State for Culture and Chair of the Supervisory Board Claudia Roth (Greens) is pleased that Schlenzka will continue and develop Rosenthal’s course. Matthias Pees, who was advised by a panel of experts, specifies this and praises Jenny Schlenzka’s curatorial and institutional practice, which focuses on the artists and their work and takes it as the starting point for all programmatic and thematic considerations. This could be understood as a criticism of the self-image of curators, which increasingly determines the art world. “Jenny Schlenzka,” Pees continues, “will complement large exhibitions of contemporary and modern art in the Gropius Bau with new performative and transdisciplinary formats.”
Schlenzka specializes in “time-based art” and has worked in New York with the likes of Hannah Black, Donna Haraway, Juliana Huxtable, Mette Ingvartsen, Ligia Lewis, Renata Lucas, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Sarah Michelson, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry and Underground Resistance . At MoMA she created the weekly live program “Sunday Sessions” and developed new exhibition formats for performative art, with Anne Imhof and Xavier Le Roy, among others. In line with her previous work, Schlenzka announces that she wants to continue opening the house. “The greater inclusion of ephemeral art in the program of major exhibitions will play an important role and expand the direction of the institution in the future.”
The selection committee included Susanne Gaensheimer (Director of the North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection), Gabriele Horn (Director of the Berlin Biennale) and Mirjam Wenzel (Director of the Jewish Museum, Frankfurt am Main).