We are happy to announce, that the new director of Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen, Düsseldorf has been appointed. Kathrin Bentele will be heading the Kunstverein as the successor to Eva Birkenstock. The board of directors, chaired by Georg Kulenkampff, voted unanimously for the 35-year-old currently living in Berlin, following a thorough selection process, involving numerous international and highly qualified applicants.

Kathrin Bentele has been assistant curator at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin since 2019, where she recently opened the group exhibition “Zeros + Ones” together with co-curators Ghislaine Leung and Anna Gritz. In 2018, Bentele was a curatorial fellow at Artists Space, New York, where she was involved in exhibition projects dedicated to Jack Smith and Art Club 2000; she had previously worked as an assistant curator at Kunsthaus Glarus in Switzerland. In addition to her institutional activities, she has curated exhibitions as a freelancer including at Kunsthalle Zürich; Galerie Drei, Cologne; and for the “curated by” program at Krinzinger Projekte, Vienna. Bentele also regularly publishes art reviews for such international art magazines as Texte zur Kunst, Artforum, Mousse, and Spike Magazine, and has worked as an editor at the publisher of books on art, JRP Ringier, Zürich. Bentele studied art history and cultural analysis at the University of Zürich.

Kathrin Bentele will be taking up her new position on October 1, 2021 and, after the completion of Eva Birkenstock’s cycle of exhibitions, will begin her own program in February 2022.