Biographical Information
Nikola Dietrich, born in 1972, has been curator for Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel since october 2007.
In 2002, following her studies of art history, new German literature and publishing in Munich and Berlin, and after working at the Galerie Klosterfelde in Berlin, Dietrich took part in the De Appel Curatorial Training Programme in Amsterdam, which she completed with the co-curated exhibition “Haunted by detail”. Following this, she worked as a project assistant for the artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset in Berlin. In 2003 she worked in the curators’ workshop, founded by René Block in the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, where she curated exhibitions with the artists Terry Fox, Arthur Köpcke and Marjetica Potrc and selected the film and discussion programme for the project “In den Schluchten des Balkan“.
Working for the institution Portikus in Frankfurt am Main from 2004 to 2007, she curated a series of exhibitions including presentations of the following artists: Sejla Kameric, Akram Zaatari, Koo Jeong-a, Sean Snyder, Felix Gmelin, Yoko Ono (in collaboration with students from the Städelschule), Matthew Ritchie, Chung Seoyoung, Mark Leckey, Marjetica Potrc, Tomas Saraceno, Dan Perjovschi, Francis Alys, John Baldessari, Judith Hopf, Henrik Olesen, Paulina Olowska and Bonnie Camplin. Nikola Dietrich’s exhibitions are generally accompanied by publications or catalogues.
During the same period that she took up her position at Portikus, she was also appointed artistic director of “Academy Remix” (2004/2005), an exchange project with students from the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste – Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, and students from “Missing Identity”, Kosovo, in collaboration with “relations”, a project initiated by the German Federal Cultural Foundation (“Kulturstiftung des Bundes”). The individual artistic projects that developed as a result of this collaboration were presented in 2005 in the Museum of Kosova in Pristina and in the institution Portikus in Frankfurt am Main. A two-day symposium with an international panel, made up of persons who were involved in exploring methods, models, and possibilities at art academies, made up the “finale” of “Academy Remix”.
