The Salzburger Kunstverein has announced Warsaw-born curator Mirela Baciak as its next director. Baciak arrives to the Austrian institution from the steirischer herbst festival, where since 2019 she has served as curator for visual art and performance. She will step into her new role in July; her tenure is slated to last for five years, with the possibility to extend. Baciak succeeds Séamus Kealy, who was recently named executive director of Oakville Galleries, outside Toronto.
“We are delighted to have appointed Mirela Baciak, a young and engaged curator whose curatorial and research practice is concerned with questions of inclusion and access, as well as a commitment to building sustainable relationships with diverse communities and publics,” said museum board president Gerda Ridler.
Before coming to steirischer herbst, Baciak worked as a freelance curator and participated in various residencies and fellowships, including those at ARAC Bucharest; Shanghai Curators Lab; HOW Art Museum Shanghai; the Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art, Warsaw; and Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna. Earlier this year, she founded the AAC | Austrian Association of Curators, an organization that fosters curatorial-knowledge production, on whose board she continues to serve. She holds an MA in critical studies from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
“The vision I have developed for Salzburger Kunstverein is that of a dynamic, responsive institution that reflects societal challenges in the continuously changing world, and considers and expands contemporary art discourses,” Baciak said. “I am interested in far-reaching artistic and curatorial projects that consider sustainability and are driven by the values of sharing and learning.”
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