The Young Curators program is looking for an exhibition curator as part of a curatorial residency at the Kunstmuseum Bochum, a museum of modern and contemporary art.

Application deadline: March 3, 2025

Selection interviews: week of March 10, 2025

Project duration: from May 1 to  October 31, 2025

The call is aimed at exhibition curators of French nationality or residing in France.

PRESENTATION OF THE YOUNG CURATORS PROGRAM

Created in 2014 at the initiative of the Office of Plastic Arts of the French Institute in Germany in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture and the Franco-German Youth Office (FGYO), the “Young Curators” program aims to establish new forms of support for emerging French exhibition curators on the German art scene.

Each year, the Bureau des arts plastiques supports the work of an exhibition curator from France in a partner institution in Germany. The selection is made based on the relevance of the projects presented in relation to the framework established by the teams of the Bureau des arts plastiques and the partner institution.

With this in mind, a partnership has been concluded for 2025 with the Kunstmuseum Bochum, a museum founded in 1921 under the name of Städtische Kunstgalerie . Today, it brings together an eclectic collection of more than 8,000 works covering a wide range of European art after 1945. This collection has recently been enriched by a legacy containing numerous works from the Fluxus movement. The Kunstmuseum offers a curator the opportunity to work closely with its team of curators and to participate in the design of a major exhibition around this central question: how can we exhibit the works of Fluxus artists today, often designed to be ephemeral?

Exhibition project: How We Met. The legacy (Fluxus) of gallery owner Inge Baecker.

From October 11, 2025 to February 15, 2026.

Fluxus [1] was based on the hope of building a better world and the desire to work, after the horrors of the Second World War, to build a new society through music, painting, performance and architecture. Through its rejection of conventions, its resolutely anti-authoritarian thinking opposed to Eurocentrism and the recognition of the plural nature of society, the Fluxus movement prefigured ideas and aspirations that nourish current social and institutional debates.

Emerging in New York in the 1960s, this loosely structured international artists' collective quickly grew into a global network that, in Germany, crystallized mainly in North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse. Happenings, concerts and performances took place in Wiesbaden, Cologne and Düsseldorf. What few people know is that Bochum also played an important, albeit limited, role in the recognition of the movement's artists. The gallery owner Inge Baecker, a native of Bochum, opened an avant-garde art gallery there in 1970, which she ran with a masterly hand. Before moving her gallery to Cologne in the 1980s, she wrote a chapter in art history in Bochum that has gone down in history internationally. Upon her death in 2021, she bequeathed to the Kunstmuseum a collection of over 700 works, including an exceptional group of Fluxus works.

Inge Baecker has exhibited numerous representatives of conceptual and intermedia art from all over the world, some for the first time in Germany. In the 1970s, for example, her gallery in Bochum, located directly opposite the Kunstmuseum, hosted performances by Takako Saito, to whom the museum recently dedicated a major solo exhibition ( Pi-Pi-po, po , 2023). Baecker’s six editions of the Bochumer Kunstwochen between 1972 and 1979 in the brand new Ruhrpark shopping centre are still remembered. It was there that Wolf Vostell’s concrete sales counter “Olympia-Hymne”, Nam June Paik’s “TV cello” and Mauricio Kagel’s “Beethovenzimmer” were created, as well as works by the artists Allan Kaprow and Milan Knížak. All of them are now part of the Kunstmuseum collection as witnesses to Inge Baecker's pioneering spirit and her attachment to her hometown.

After three years of sorting and inventorying, the works from the Inge Baecker collection will now be the subject of a special, large-scale temporary exhibition that will fill a gap in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bochum on conceptual and performance art from the 1970s and 1980s. The ambition of this major exhibition is to transpose the ideas and thinking of the Fluxus movement to the present and make them accessible to the general public. From both an aesthetic and political perspective, the Fluxus movement shattered the walls of the museum institution. By abandoning the myth of the individual genius in favor of a collective approach oriented towards the creative process, in which the idea counts more than the work itself, Fluxus gave a radically new dimension to the very notion of art.

This exhibition is an opportunity to launch this playful challenge to the museum and the public: how can the ideas of Fluxus be translated into today's world? How can a museum preserve and exhibit works that are designed to be ephemeral and make them known to an amateur audience? Can Fluxus help us to rethink the museum institution through music, painting, performance and architecture to make it a plural, open, anti-authoritarian and rebellious institution (since this is the ambition of the Kunstmuseum Bochum)? Finally, the exhibition seeks to show how actions on a local scale, such as the hard work of the Inge Baecker gallery in Bochum, are today part of global contexts that they leave their mark on.

In this large exhibition project, which extends over two floors and nearly 1,500 m², the protean works of the Inge Baecker legacy will rub shoulders with productions by contemporary artists, exploring the ideas, humor and aspirations of the Fluxus movement through a vast program of mediation and performances and jointly constructing with the public a counter-proposal to conventional curatorial practice.

In the run-up to the exhibition, intensive research work is being carried out in collaboration with the ZADIK Institute (Central Archive for Research on the German and International Art Market) in Cologne. This institute is also closely linked to Inge Baecker. In 1994, she donated her gallery archives to ZADIK, thereby entrusting it with part of its history. After this, in 1998, Inge Baecker was elected to succeed Rudolf Zwirner as donor representative on the board of directors of the ZADIK association, of which she remained a member until her death in 2021. The institute therefore possesses valuable archives that document more than 50 years of Inge Baecker's activity as a gallery owner, including extensive correspondence with artists and collectors.

MISSIONS

The young curator will join the team of the Kunstmuseum Bochum and will support the curatorial team in the various missions of the institution. He or she will be responsible for the following missions:

– support for the Kunstmuseum curatorial team in all work to prepare the exhibition (writing texts, contacting artists, compiling lists of works, etc.), contribution to the design of the exhibition content and its production as well as to the preparation and holding of events within the framework of the mediation programme in connection with the exhibition “How We Met”;

– development and supervision of a workshop for a young audience (under 36) around themes linked to the exhibition in collaboration with the mediation team.

The young commissioner will also write an activity report to be published on the website www.jeunescommissaires.de .

PRESENTATION OF THE BOCHUM KUNSTMUSEUM

Curiosity, the desire to experiment and the invitation to open dialogue are at the heart of the project of the Kunstmuseum Bochum. Located on the edge of the Stadtpark , a stone's throw from the city centre, the Kunstmuseum is conceived as a place halfway between a museum and a studio, a space where everything is possible and where everyone has their place.

The specificity of the Kunstmuseum is reflected in the duality of its two adjacent buildings. A generous architecture that creates a friendly atmosphere and invites visitors to experience modern and contemporary art, through exhibitions or performances, and to enter into dialogue with it. The highlight of this eclectic collection of over 8,000 works is, beyond a few key works from the early 20th century  , a very broad range of European art after 1945, from Zofia Kulik to Andy Warhol, Louise Nevelson and Tadeusz Kantor. The collection has recently been enriched by a bequest containing a significant group of works from the Fluxus movement.

More information on the Kunstmuseum website: https://www.kunstmuseumbochum.de/

WANTED PROFILE

– You have training in the field of exhibition curating as well as an excellent knowledge of the international art scene.

– You have a good knowledge of how a museum works, you have a particular interest in the Fluxus movement and you feel an affinity with the Kunstmuseum project.

– You have a clear vision of the future of the museum institution and are able to translate this vision into concrete projects. You have a thorough knowledge of contemporary social and political debates.

– You are aware of the importance of mediation work for a public artistic institution and you are ready to collaborate diligently with the members of the analog, digital and hybrid mediation team.

– You know how to write texts for various purposes and for various audiences.

– You are sensitive to diversity and discrimination in your relationships with the public and your colleagues.

– You have French nationality or reside in France.

– You have the opportunity to stay in Bochum from May to October 2025 and arrange your accommodation yourself.

– Fluency in English is mandatory, fluency in German is an asset.

– You will be under 36 years old at the start of the mission.

REMUNERATION AND DURATION

The work period runs from May to October 2025, a duration of six months.

The overall budget of €12,000 including tax is distributed as follows:

– fees of €7,200 including tax (i.e. €1,200 including tax per month over six months) for project support and the curatorial mission;

– fees of €1,500 including tax (i.e. €250 including tax per month over six months) for the development and supervision of a workshop for a young audience;

– assistance with accommodation costs of up to €3,000 including tax (i.e. €500 including tax per month over six months);

– assistance with travel costs between France and Germany up to €300 including tax

The mission will take place in person and will represent a working time of five days per week (i.e. 40 hours per week).

DOCUMENTS TO BE SUBMITTED IN PDF FORMAT:

– A CV including your date of birth and your SIRET number;

– a cover letter (one page);

– a list of projects you have participated in (if it does not appear in the CV).

Please send your application in English by email to the following address: info.bdap@institutfrancais.de

All documents must not exceed 5 MB.

Application deadline: March 3, 2025

Selection interviews: week of March 10, 2025

CONTACT

Office of Plastic Arts | French Institute in Germany

French Botschaft, Pariser Platz 5, 10117 Berlin

+49 (0)30 590 03 9244

info.bdap@institutfrancais.de | www.jeunescommissaires.de

Responsible: Oriane Durand | Cultural Project Manager: Alix Weidner

This project is carried out with the support of the Ministry of Culture and the Franco-German Youth Office (FGYO).

[1] Fluxus, a loosely structured international collective of artists, was marked in the 1960s by many avant-garde artists including Ay-O, Mary Bauermeister, Joseph Beuys, Bazon Brock, George Brecht, John Cage, Arthur Køpcke, Benjamin Patterson, Dick Higgins, Robert Filliou, Ludwig Gosewitz, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Charlotte Moorman, Yoko Ono, Robin Page, Nam June Paik, Takako Saito, Carolee Schneeman, Tomas Schmit, Mieko Shiomi, Ben Vautier, Wolf Vostell and Emmett Williams, to name a few.