The City Curator is an independent curatorial format for public art that was initiated in Hamburg in 2013 and has since seen several follow-up editions in many cities. We believe that every city should have a city curator. Our aim is to draw attention to Hamburg’s important and often overlooked public collection of art, as well as to address relevant social and political issues through temporary art interventions in public spaces, outside the protection of white cubes. We connect the local and the international, the ebb and flow of public life, Vedel with Weddel.
In October 2024, Joanna Warsza was appointed as the 3rd City Curator of Hamburg and the project is since then hosted at Kunsthaus Hamburg. The ongoing program is built on two pillars, the first is called Five Years – Five Elements and evolves with five summer exhibitions each dedicated to one of the five core elements – Cosmos, Fire, Air, Earth and Water, and dealing with the idea of a planetary public sphere. The second series, titled Counter-Monuments (2025-2027) features ongoing activations of the Hamburg public art collection. The term Counter-Monuments originates from Hamburg and asks how to critically and sensitively engage with the public space and the politics of memory in which many different voices and experiences can be seen and heard in a multidirectional manner in a post-migrant society.
