Elena Filipovic has been named director of the Kunstmuseum Basel, replacing Josef Helfenstein who was appointed in 2016. She takes up the post in June next year, setting the agenda for one of Switzerland’s most important museums.
Filipovic is the director and chief curator at the Kunsthalle Basel where she has organised more than 60 exhibitions since 2014 including shows dedicated to Michael Armitage, Matthew Angelo Harrison, Yngve Holen and Anne Imhof.
In 2008, together with Adam Szymczyk, she organised the fifth Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. In 2022, she curated the Croatian pavilion at the 59th Venice Art Biennale.
Felix Uhlmann, the chairman of Kunstmuseum Basel’s art committee, says: “Filipovic convinced the [interview] committee with her vision regarding the future of our museum as well as her professional track record, her leadership skills and her infectious enthusiasm for the entire range of art history.”
According to the Princeton University website, Filipovic’s PhD dissertation, The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp, “focuses on a series of fugitive operations (or ‘activities’ as her title calls them) that Marcel Duchamp incited between 1913 and 1969”.
The Kunstmuseum Basel is one of the world’s oldest museums, with origins dating back to the 17th century, and is home to more than 300,000 works spanning eight centuries.