Maria Lind appointed Director

Maria Lind has been appointed the new Director of Konstmuseet i Norr in Kiruna, Sweden. She is currently the Counsellor of Cultural Affairs at the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow.

“It is an honour to be appointed director of Konstmuseet i Norr. I look forward to working with the team towards taking the next step with this young museum, devoted to contemporary art, that I have visited several times. Many interesting artists are based in this region. Konstmuseet i Norr and its important mission in Norrbotten and the Barents region is right at the heart of the major issues of our time, such as climate change, natural resources, and the culture and rights of the Sami and other indigenous peoples. I am beyond excited,” states Maria Lind.

Lind has extensive experience heading art institutions in Sweden and elsewhere. Among other things, she has been the director of Stockholm’s Tensta Konsthall and of Kunstverein in Munich, as well as executive director for IASPIS in Stockholm and the graduate program at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York. In 2016 she was the artistic director of Asia’s largest contemporary art event, the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea. Lind has published widely since the 1990s, in Art Review, Artforum, e-flux journal and Dagens Nyheter, among others. Seven Years: The Rematerialisation of Art from 2011 to 2017 (2019) and Tensta Museum: Reports from New Sweden (2021) are some of her most recent publications.

“Maria Lind’s background in contemporary art, curating, and international collaboration, in addition to her experience in successfully running high-level artistic activities, make her very well suited to lead the development of the Konstmuseet i Norr towards an exciting future. We warmly welcome Maria Lind to Kiruna as director of Konstmuseet i Norr,” said Roger Suup, Chairman of the Executive Board of Konstmuseet i Norr.

Konstmuseet i Norr, Norrbotten County Art Museum, is a museum of contemporary art in Kiruna in Northern Sweden. Konstmuseet i Norr was established in 2009 as a mobile regional art activity in collaboration between Region Norrbotten region and Kiruna municipality. Since 2018, the art museum is situated in Kiruna’s city hall, Kristallen, where it displays socially engaged and critically oriented contemporary art, with the Barents region as its geographical starting point. In addition to on-site activities, Konstmuseet i Norr conducts county-wide exhibitions and project activities in Norrbotten’s 14 municipalities.

Maria Lind has worked with artists such as Otobong Nkanga, Hito Steyerl, Goldin+Senneby, Walid Raad, Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, Ahmet Ögut and Joar Nango. Among projects that she has curated and co-curated are Manifesta 2 in Luxembourg (1998); Robert Smithson: A Retrospective (1999) and What If: Art on the Verge of Architecture and Design at Moderna Museet (2000); retrospectives with Christine Borland (2002-2003) and Rirkrit Tiravanija (2004) at Kunstverein München; Taking the Matter into Common Hands (2005) and A Fiesta of Tough Choices (2007) at Iaspis; The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art (2008) and Philippe Parreno at CCS Bard (2009); Future Light (2015) and Frederick Kiesler: Life Visions (2016) at Museum Angewandte Kunst in Vienna; Fuel to the Fire by Natascha Sadr Haghighian (2016) and Red Love by Dora Garcia (2018) at Tensta konsthall (2018); and the Art Encounters Biennial in Timisoara (2019).

Maria Lind will take up the position on September 1.