Vienna-born curator Fanny Hauser has been named the next director of the Kunsthalle Zürich, taking the place of Daniel Baumann, who will be leaving the museum after ten years to work on curatorial projects independently, the museum announced. Hauser will start the new position in January 2025.
Currently the deputy director at Ludwig Forum in Aachen, Germany, Hauser is leaving the modern art foundation just more than two years after taking up the position in May 2022.
She started her work as a curator in 2016 when she co-founded the contemporary art-focused Kunstverein Kevin Space in Vienna, where she co-curated exhibitions on artists with increasing international reach. Hauser organized shows for Ioana Nemeș, a Romanian artist based in Bucharest, Chinese artists Peng Zuqiang and Evelyn Taocheng Wang who are based in the U.S and Netherlands, respectively, and Algerian artist Lydia Ourahmane, among others.
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Before coming to Ludwig Forum, Hauser worked as a curatorial assistant for documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel under Polish critic and curator Adam Szymczyk. From 2019 to 2021, she served as a curatorial fellow at the contemporary art foundation Gebert Stiftung für Kultur in Rapperswil, Switzerland. That position is one Kunsthalle’s selection committee president Michael Ringier told ArtReview lead Hauser to being tapped into the Zurich art scene.
Hauser’s two-and-a-half-year tenure at the Ludwig Forum helped to shape the German museum’s programs in a successful way, director Eva Birkenstock saidf in a statement. She added that Hauser’s departure to Kunsthalle Zürich is a big step for the curator, acknowledging the museum as being one of the top institutions dedicated to contemporary art in Switzerland.