Fatima Hellberg to Lead Vienna’s MUMOK

Austria has named Swedish curator Fatima Hellberg,since 2019the director of the Bonner Kunstverein in Bonn, Germany, as the next general director of Vienna’s Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (MUMOK). Hellberg will take up her new role in October 2025, succeeding Karola Kraus, who has helmed the institution for fifteen years. MUMOK is known for its collection comprising modern and contemporary art, including examples of Conceptual art, Fluxus, Pop art, and Vienna Actionism.

Andrea Mayer, Austria’s state secretary for arts and culture, praised Hellberg in a statement as having “presented an outstanding concept with very clever approaches and a lot of esprit.” Hellberg was selected for the role from among a field of twenty-four candidates. “She represents a new departure, a new and different way of thinking about museums, cooperation and diversity, but also a keen sense of history and the strength of the MUMOK collection,” said Mayer.

Prior to her arrival at her current job, Hellberg since 2015 had been artistic director of the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, where she mounted solo exhibitions of work by Gregg Bordowitz, Hildegarde Duane, and Leslie Thornton, among others. Before that, she held curatorial roles at Cubitt and Electra, both in London, and taught at the Sandberg Institute, Oxford University, and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She has curated exhibitions at museums including the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; the Institute of Contemporary Arts and Tate Modern, both in London; and Sweden’s Malmö Konsthall. Exhibitions curated by Hellberg are set to open at Camden Art Centre, London, and Haus Mödrath, Kerpen, Germany.

“I look forward to extending the rigorous and bold tradition of the institution, whilst considering novel ways of activating and bringing liveness to its collection and expanding its public,” said Hellberg in a statement, adding that she was committed to “developing spaces of reflection, experience, and confrontation.”