What, How＆for Whom to Lead Skulptur Projekte MÜnster

Skulptur Projekte Münsterhas announced Croatia–based curatorial collective What, How & for Whom (WHW) as the artistic directors of the event’s fifth iteration, to take place in summer 2027. Ivet Ćurlin, Nataša Ilić, and Sabina Sabolović, the collective’s founding members, will be the first women to lead the German decennial. They fill the role left vacant by Kasper König, a cofounder of Skulptur Projekte Münster and its longtime artistic director, whodiedearlier this month.

WHW was founded in 1999 in Zagreb, Croatia. The collective takes its name from its first project, taking place in 2000 and devoted to the 152nd anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. The trio are concerned with the questions inherent in their moniker, and additionally seek to explore art’s impact on the way society is structured and experienced. WHW directed Zagreb’s city-owned Gallery Nova from 2003 to 2023 and in 2018 founded WHW Akademija, an independent international study program aimed at supporting emerging artists. From 2019 to 2024, Ćurlin, Ilić, and Sabolović served asartistic directorsof Vienna’s Kunsthalle Wien; they wereforced outafter the city government issued an open call for applicants for their role.

“We are looking to bring new artistic proposals and ways of thinking that have not yet been seen [in Skulptur Projekte],” said Ćurlin, Ilić, and Sabolović in a statement. “We want to address the social and political tensions of the present through our work with the artists, and we will seek to build on the practices of feminism and collectivism, as well as the many previous experiments with public art. How can art in public space today meaningfully address the fragility of democracy, ecology and common life? Can it strengthen mutual respect and liberation? How can we reformulate the pedagogical claim that the Skulptur Projekte has had since its beginnings? These are the questions that will characterize our curatorial journey over the next three years.”