Lebt und arbeitet in Wien Talks (EN)
Curating Lebt und arbeitet in Wien

On the occasion of Lebt and arbeitet in Wien, Kunsthalle Wien has conceived a series of talks in collaboration with Phileas that foregrounds the voices of art professionals – and particularly artists – in various discussions about the realities of living and working in Vienna.

The first talk invites the curators of Lebt und arbeitet in Wien – Daniel Baumann, Michelle Cotton and Monika Georgieva – to a conversation with Anna Hugo (Visitor and Public Programmes, Phileas). Together they will provide a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to curate an exhibition of such ambitious scale. Each offers a unique perspective to the subject of the “Viennese art scene”, especially due to their different levels of familiarity with local artists prior to starting the project. A collaborative endeavour throughout, the curators will share what they learned from each other during this process, how their perceptions of the local art scene did (or didn’t) change, and what their most important take-aways from the exhibition will be.

Daniel Baumann

Daniel Baumann is an art historian, author, and curator. He lives and works in Basel. From 1996 to 2014, he was curator of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation at the Kunstmuseum Bern. In 2003, he curated Junge Szene at the Secession in Vienna and, in 2004, began an ongoing exhibition series in Tbilisi. From 2008 to 2013, he co-directed the Basel exhibition space New Jerseyy together with Tobias Madison, Emanuel Rossetti, and Dan Solbach. Together with Dan Byers and Tina Kukielski, he was curator of the Carnegie International 2013 at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. Alongside Hans Ulrich Obrist, Philip Ursprung, and Xue Tan, he is a curator of the annually held Engadin Art Talks. He writes for magazines such as Spike Art Magazine and Ursula, and from 2015 to 2025 he served as director of Kunsthalle Zürich. He currently teaches at the Zurich University of the Arts and is a curator at Casa São Roque in Porto.

Michelle Cotton

Michelle Cotton is Artistic Director of Kunsthalle Wien and curator of Lebt und arbeitet in Wien: Contemporary Art from Vienna (together with Daniel Baumann and Monika Georgieva).

Monika Georgieva

Monika Georgieva is an independent curator. She lives and works in Vienna. In 2020, she co-founded, together with the artist Aaron Amar Bhamra, the independent exhibition space Laurenz for artistic experiments and discourse. She also teaches in the fields of architecture and curatorial practice. From 2023 to 2025, she served as Artistic Director of Kunstverein Eisenstadt. She is an alumna and former fellow of the de Appel Curatorial Programme in Amsterdam, and one of the initiators of the first Curatorial Summer School, which was launched in Amsterdam in 2024.