Gabi Ngcobo appointed new director

The Supervisory Board of Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam announces the appointment of Gabi Ngcobo as its new director. A renowned curator internationally, Ngcobo begins her tenure in January 2024. She arrives at this position from South Africa, where she is Curatorial Director of the Javett Art Centre at the University of Pretoria. Ngcobo will succeed Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, director of Kunstinstituut Melly since 2018 and who concludes her position at the end of 2023.

Annet Lekkerkerker states “We are convinced that Gabi Ngcobo’s experience and ideas will be of great significance to our institution in the coming years, as much as to the field of contemporary art in the Netherlands and abroad. We look forward to her arrival, and to warmly welcome her at Melly.” Lekkerkerker is chair of Kunstinstituut Melly’s Supervisory Board and chair of the Executive Board of the Amsterdam University of the Arts (AHK). She has been part of Kunstinstituut Melly’s board since 2017.

Yolande Zola Zoli van der Heide explains that they were impressed by Gabi Ngcobo’s collaborative leadership style, management experience, and curatorial vision. Van der Heide is the chair of the search committee and works as Senior Curator at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Van der Heide has been a member of Kunstinstituut Melly’s Supervisory Board for almost three years. She says “There is a common quest to transform institutions towards being more just and joyous. Ngcobo is well experienced in public engagement; she brings people along, and encourages people to be authentically themselves. She is an open collaborator. She has an understanding that radicality has roots, and that this means looking into history as much as into the future.”

In recent years, Ngcobo was key in positioning Javett-UP as a living academy. She organized several exhibitions there since 2021, as well as new commissions with artists Oscar Murillo, Nolan Oswald Dennis and Luana Vitra, among others. “I’m excited and honored to be joining Kunstinstituut Melly as its director,” says Ngcobo via email, adding, “This is an institution with a critical history; an institution that has had to face head-on challenging questions of our time. I look forward to working with the team towards the next steps.”

Six years is the maximum period for a director’s tenure at Kunstinstituut Melly. This longstanding commitment to make leadership change involves a renewed artistic vision for the  institution, it expands its networks, and it brings to it new management styles.

During her tenure, Hernández Chong Cuy has commissioned new work and organized exhibitions with artists Melike Kara, Iris Kensmil, Teresa Margolles, and Cecilia Vicuña, among many others. She also steered the institution through the corona pandemic, and led its name change initiative. Kunstinstituut Melly was formerly known as Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art.

The closing exhibition and public-engagement project of Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy’s tenure will be My Oma, which will mark her six years of transformational institutional work here. My Oma will be present at Kunstinstituut Melly from December 8, 2023 until May 12, 2024. More information can be found on our website.

Since Kunstinstituut Melly’s foundation in 1990, the appointed directors have been given meaningful time, resources and support to direct and program at the institution. Its former directors are: Chris Dercon from 1990 to 1995; Bartomeu Marífrom 1996 to 2001; Catherine David from 2002 to 2004; Hans Maarten van den Brink, interim director from May 2004 to April 2006; Nicolaus Schafhausen from 2006 to 2011; and Defne Ayas from 2012 to 2017.

For the biography of Gabi Ngcobo, see here.