Art historian Anna Gritz will be the new director of the Haus am Waldsee. The current curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art will take over as director in June 2022, succeeding Katja Blomberg. With this decision, the house’s sponsoring association follows the recommendation of the four-member search committee consisting of Stephanie Rosenthal (Gropius Bau, Berlin), Jarrett Gregory (Callie’s, Berlin and Fondation Beyeler, Basel), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, from 2023 Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin) and Moritz Wesseler (Museum Fridericianum, Kassel).
After studying art history in Cologne and completing a Master’s degree in Curatorial Practice at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, Düsseldorf-born Anna Gritz first worked as an exhibition manager at apexart, New York. In 2010, she started as a curatorial assistant at the Hayward Gallery, London. In 2011, she moved to the Institute of Contemporary Arts ICA there as associate curator, where she curated the survey exhibition of British filmmaker Lis Rhodes. Already curating film and performance at the South London Gallery from 2013, Gritz gained international attention with projects such as Canadian artist Kapwani Kiwanga’s solo exhibition (2015), the group exhibition Last Seen Entering the Biltmore (2014) and British artist Bonnie Camplin’s Turner Prize-nominated installation The Military Industrial Complex (2015).
Anna Gritz has lived in Berlin since 2016, where she has since curated a series of acclaimed monographic exhibitions at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, including with Steve Bishop, Sidsel Meineche Hansen, Judith Hopf, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Michael Stevenson and Amelie von Wulffen, as well as the group exhibitions The Making of Husbands: Christina Ramberg in Dialogue (2019) and, together with Kathrin Bentele and Ghislaine Leung, Zeros and Ones (2021). In 2016, she was curatorial attaché of the 20th Sydney Biennale. Since 2019, she has been a member of the acquisitions commission of FRAC Lorraine in Metz and is a member of the advisory board of E-Werk Luckenwalde.
The board of the supporting association says about the election: “There was an impressive number of interesting applications for the management of the house. The close support and advice from the search committee was essential in making a convincing choice. In addition to high curatorial competence, a fine sense for the further development of the tasks of contemporary art institutions and her own view of art, Anna Gritz has an interesting international network.”
Anna Gritz says of her future work: “I am very much looking forward to starting this new chapter in the history of the Haus am Waldsee. The special location of the house, its architecture and the newly renovated garden create immense possibilities and I can’t wait to work closely with the team at the house to rethink the role of institutions in today’s world and locate artistic perspectives at the heart of this investigation.”
Haus am Waldsee
Argentinische Allee 30
14163 Berlin-Zehlendorf
