Fanny Hauser to Lead Kunsthalle ZÜrich

TheKunsthalle Zürichhas named Fanny Hauser as its next director. She will step into the role vacated by Daniel Baumann, who is leaving after a decade on the job to pursue independent curatorial projects. The Vienna-born Hauser arrives from the Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst in Aachen, Germany, where she has served as deputy director since May 2022. She will take up her new post in January 2025.

While at the Ludwig Forum, Hauser mounted a well-regarded survey of the work of Yugoslavian experimental artist Katalin Ladik, initiated by Hendrik Folkerts. Prior to joining that institution, Hauser was a lecturer at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna from 2021 to 2022. Previously, from 2019 to 2021, she was a curatorial fellow at the Gebert Foundation for Culture in Rapperswil, Switzerland, and in 2016–17, she worked as a curatorial assistant at Documenta 14, where she was involved with new commissions and the moving-image program. Also in 2016, alongside Carolina Nöbauer, Denise Helene Sumi, and Franziska Sophie Wildförster, she cofounded Kunstverein Kevin Space, a contemporary art association, in Vienna, where she co-organized shows of artists including Romanian conceptual artist Ioana Nemeș; Chinese filmmaker and installation artist Peng Zuqiang; Chinese multidisciplinary artist Evelyn Taocheng Wang; and Algerian multidisciplinary artist Lydia Ourahmane.

“Fanny Hauser’s career has been characterized by great initiative and enthusiasm for contemporary art,” said Michael Ringier, president of the selection committee, in a statement. “She knows Switzerland and its peculiarities through her work at the Gebert Foundation in Rapperswil and is very familiar with the program at Kunsthalle Zürich thanks to countless visits to Zürich.”