Tom Engels Appointed Director of Kunstverein München
237Sept. 5, 2025
Belgian editor, curator, and writer Tom Engels has been named as the next director of the Kunstverein München. Engels arrives to the Munich contemporary art institution from Graz, Austria’s Grazer Kunstverein, where he has been artistic director since 2021. He will take the reins from Maurin Dietrich, who has led the museum since 2019 and will remain in her role through the end of 2025. Engels has named Line Ebert incoming curator; Lucie Pia will remain as assistant curator.
“With Tom Engels, Kunstverein München welcomes a director whose approach combines thoughtful vision with a sensitive and committed collaboration with artists,” said Kunstverein München board chair Rüdiger Maaß in a statement. “He works with artists as long-term interlocutors—supporting them in developing ideas over time and creating conditions in which challenging, ambitious work can emerge. We are excited to see how this ethos will shape the kunstverein’s next chapter, building on its legacy as a vital space for artistic and critical experimentation.”
While at Grazer Kunstverein, Engels organized solo exhibitions by artists including Tom Burr and Nora Schultz. He curated the Fifteenth Baltic Triennial at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius in 2024, collaborating with Maya Tounta. Among the institutions at which he has presented projects and exhibitions are Museion, Bolzano, Italy; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; M HKA, Antwerp; and Jan Mot, Brussels. Engels has engaged deeply with publishing, producing with Julie Peeters some fifteen volumes at Grazer Kunstverein. Other editorial projects include those with Axis Axis, Roma Publications, Sarma, and Sternberg Press. Engels has collaborated with choreographers including Alexandra Bachzetsis, Mette Edvardsen, Bryana Fritz, Mette Ingvartsen, PRICE/Mathias Ringgenberg, and Eszter Salamon. He holds master’s degrees in art history from Ghent University and in choreography and performance from the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, University of Gießen.
“I think of Kunstverein München as one of those singular spaces that allow art to shift the cadence of how we think and feel—slowing things down when everything else calls for speed, or quickening something inside us that resists being named,” said Engels in a statement. “Today, such spaces are not a given; they ask for our collective attention and commitment—to be sustained, to be defended—so they can continually be made and remade. For me, this means inhabiting Kunstverein München as a site to rehearse and renegotiate how we speak, sense, and imagine—not to chase novelty, but to turn to what is at hand and work it differently, until what feels locked into pattern might begin to open up.”