Art Brussels

Melanie Deboutte

Melanie Deboutte (b. 1988) studied Art History at the Universities of Leuven and Ghent. She worked in different roles – as public mediator, researcher, production manager and curator – on projects and exhibitions in S.M.A.K., Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Mu.ZEE, M Leuven, Z33 and M HKA. She contributed to the launch of the Centre for Art Archives Flanders (CKV) at the M HKA as a consultant on artists’ legacies and archives.

Since 2019, Melanie Deboutte is Director and Curator at the Roger Raveel Museum where she curates exhibitions on Belgian art history from the 1950s to the 1980s as well as contemporary art. She also works as a freelance advisor for public art integration.

Yilmaz Dziewior

Dr. Yilmaz Dziewior, (b. 1964 in Bonn, Germany), has been director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne since February 1, 2015. From 2009 to 2015 he was director of the Kunsthaus Bregenz (KUB), a leading exhibition venue for contemporary art in Europe. As commissioner, Dziewior curated the Austrian pavilion for the 2015 Venice Biennale. Before working in Bregenz, he was director of the Kunstverein in Hamburg for eight years, during which time he also taught as professor of art theory at the local academy of fine arts. He was curator of the German pavilion for the 2022 Venice Biennale.

Dziewior has a long history at his current workplace. From 1996 to 1999 he worked in a freelance position for the Museum Ludwig. In 1997 he curated a project there with Sarah Lucas, and in 1999 he was responsible for the contemporary part of the exhibition Art Worlds in Dialogue: From Gauguin to the Global Present. Dziewior has also been a regular contributor to Artforum (New York), Camera Austria (Graz), and Texte zur Kunst (Berlin). He has edited more than fifty books, including exhibition catalogues, on twentieth- and twenty-first-century art and has also contributed essays to catalogues published by the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Hamburger Kunsthalle (Hamburg), the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen (Düsseldorf), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles).

Dziewior’s work is characterized by a focus on social issues, including identity politics and cultural attributions, and he has a strong interest in art from the African continent (Bodys Isek Kingelez, Marthine Tayou), Latin America and the Caribbean (Diango Hernandez, Gabriel Orozco, Minerva Cuevas), and Asia (Haegue Yang, Danh Vō, Ai Weiwei), having curated major solo exhibitions on several of these artists. His approach to curating is interdisciplinary and collaborative, as is evident in the exhibitions and projects that he has undertaken in his career. Architecture (Arno Brandlhuber, raumlabor Berlin, Kuehn Malvezzi, Eckhard Schulz-Fielitz) as well as theater and dance (René Pollesch, She She Pop, Yvonne Rainer) also play an important role in his work. An analysis of the context at hand forms the foundation of his curatorial practice, which is reflected in the approaches taken by his experimental platform at the KUB Arena in Bregenz as well as in the Insert series of exhibitions and events at the Kunstverein in Hamburg.

Over the past twenty years, Yilmaz Dziewior has collaborated on major solo exhibitions with Yael Bartana, Cosima von Bonin, VALIE EXPORT, Harun Farocki, Andrea Fraser, Wade Guyton, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha and Roni Horn, among others. Group exhibitions curated by Dziewior include Formalismus: Moderne Kunst, heute (Formalism: Modern Art, Today), This Place Is My Place: Begehrte Orte (Desired Spaces), Wessen Geschichte (Whose History), So machen wir es: Techniken und Ästhetik der Aneignung (That’s the Way We Do It: Techniques and Aesthetics of Appropriation), Liebe ist kälter als das Kapital (Love Is Colder Than Capital), and Wir nennen es Ludwig (We Call It Ludwig).

Margriet Schavemaker

Prof. dr. Margriet Schavemaker received her education as an art historian and philosopher at the University of Amsterdam. She specializes in modern and contemporary culture and museums. Counterculture, feminism, new media, and diversity and inclusion are at the heart of her multidisciplinary practice, which largely encompasses the making of exhibitions, public programs, and publications, as well as writing, lecturing, and media appearances.

In June 2024, Schavemaker started as General Director at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Fotomuseum Den Haag, KM21 and the Escher Museum. Since 2018, Schavemaker has acted as professor of Media and Art in Museum Practice, part of the Media Studies department at the University of Amsterdam. In this role she supervises PhD students, teaches, and conducts research into critical museum practices and new forms of collecting and co-creation.

As artistic director of the Amsterdam Museum since 2019, Schavemaker was responsible for the museum’s collection and programming, with a focus on co-creation, working with artists, and decolonizing the museum. Between 2009 and 2019, Schavemaker oversaw various departments within the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. She initiated the museum’s public program and curated exhibitions Schavemaker has published extensively on modern and contemporary art, theory, and curatorial practices.

As long-time advocate of bringing academia and the museum closer together, Schavemaker has curated many public programs and scholarly conferences since the 1990s.