Announcement of the nominated artists on October 6, 2010 at BMW Kurfürstendamm.
Berlin. Mechthild Holter (founder of the agency, ”players”), Dr. Gregor Jansen (director, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf), Burghart Klaußner (actor and director), Chus Martínez (senior curator, Macba – Museu d’art Contemporani de Barcelona), Dr. Christiane Meyer-Stoll (curator and keeper, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein), Dr. Matthias Mühling (head of collections and curator, Lenbachhaus Munich) and Rein Wolfs (director, Kunsthalle Fridericianum Kassel) have been nominated as First Jury for the Prize of the Nationalgalerie for Young Art 2011:
Mechthild Holter, founder of the agency, ”players”, one of the most successful German agencies for finding engagements for actors and directors. Holter graduated in Italian and English language, and theatre, film and television studies. At first, she worked as photographer, e.g. for the journal “Spex”, and as photojournalist. Since 1994 she finds engagements for actors and directors through ”players”.
Gregor Jansen is director of the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf since 2010. He holds a doctorate in art history and has been working as exhibition manager, curator, lecturer, art critic and writer since 1991. He was curator of exhibitions about the art of the 20th and 21st centuries in Aachen, Cologne, Maastricht, Peking and Seoul. From 2005 until 2009, he was director of the ZKM | Museum für Neue Kunst Karlsruhe.
Burghart Klaußner, born in 1949, actor. Studied at the Max Reinhardt School of Drama in Berlin. Since the 1970s he had theatre engagements, e.g. at the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer (Berlin) and the Schauspielhaus in Hamburg as well as theatres in Frankfurt am Main, Bochum and Zurich. He has won several awards as movie actor, most recently for his role in the movie, ”Das weiße Band” (The white band). Klaußner is a member of the Deutsche Filmakademie and has been elected member of the board there in 2010. He also works as director and author.
Chus Martínez, senior curator of the Museu d’Art Contemporani (MACBA) in Barcelona. Having been director of the Kunstverein in Frankfurt from 2005 to 2008, she is at present a member of the team of curators of the 29th São Paulo biennial festival, which will open this September. At MACBA, she is currently involved in the exhibition, ”Are You Ready For TV?”, which will open in November and which examines the historical overlap between art and philosophy, and the medium of the television programme. Her writings have been published in newspapers and journals such as Artforum, Kaleidoscope, Piktogram, Afterall and in monographs, e.g. about Armando Andrade Tudela, Kostis Velonis, Thomas Bayrle, Deimantas Narkevicius and Manon de Boer.
Christiane Meyer-Stoll, born in 1963 in Essen, studied art history, ethnology and history in Munich, and today is working as curator at Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (Vaduz). Since 1989, Mrs. Meyer-Stoll has been active in the area of contemporary art. Working as curator between 1993 and 1999 she participated in establishing the Collection Goetz (a prestigious private collection of contemporary art in Munich) as a private museum, and thereafter she was managing the artists workshop in Lothringerstraße (Munich). Exhibitions concerning individual proponents of Modernism after 1960, e.g. the first retrospective show of Fred Sandback, shows about Arte Povera and other movements have been rewarded recently, e.g. she won an award for curators, the Justus Bier Prize in Berlin (2009).
Matthias Mühling, born in 1968, is an art historian and Head of the Department of Collections/Exhibitions/Research and Head of Collections for the Arts after 1945 at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau in Munich. He studied art history, theatre, film and television studies and political science in Bochum and Münster. From 2003 to 2005 he worked as scientific assistant at the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. As author and curator he has published widely and has organised many exhibitions about the art of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Rein Wolfs, is currently the director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum in Kassel. Wolfs has been the founding director of the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art in Zurich (working there from 1996 until 2001) before he was appointed exhibition manager at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In 2003, he was also the curator of the Dutch pavilion at the biennial festival of Venice.
The seven members of the jury will assess more than 100 proposals to select four candidates who will participate in a group exhibition in the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in September 2011. As has already been announced at the last award ceremony in October 2009, for the first time two members of the Deutsche Filmakademie (Mechthild Holter and Burghart Klaußner) will be invited to join the jury. The origin of this extension lies in the new co-operation between Prize of the Nationalgalerie and the Deutsche Filmakademie. In future, the two institutions will work together more closely in order to provide artistic film productions with a forum in the museum. This idea is based on the observation that in the commercial film sector also there are frequently productions which may be considered as “artistic” and which by means of an unconventional film language come close to the aesthetics of the art movie (video, film, film installation). Such film productions are shown at the periphery of film festivals but go largely unnoticed by the art world. With the newly established PRIZE FOR YOUNG FILM ART the Nationalgalerie intends to honour a cinematic position every two years.
The Prize of the Nationalgalerie for Young Art has been awarded for the first time in 2000 and is thus celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. The long-standing main sponsor, BMW, will as always organise the shortlist party to announce the nomination of the four artists, on October 6, 2010. For almost 40 years now, BMW has been involved in more than 100 formats for contemporary art, music, design and architecture worldwide. In Berlin, BMW supported the Berlinale in 2010, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden at the jointly initiated event “Staatsoper für alle” as well as the curatorial workshop Real Players of the Berlin Biennale. Moreover, in 2007, the 16th BMW Art Car was created in Berlin by the artist Olafur Eliasson.
