Manifesta names Kasper König as curator of 2014 biennial

Kaspar König has been named the chief curator of Manifesta 10, Europe’s leading biennial of contemporary art, which will be hosted in St Petersburg next year. The main venue for the festival, which will take place from 28 June to 31 October 2014, will be the State Hermitage Museum.

König said: “Manifesta 10 in the Hermitage will be subtle and substantial; contemporary art and exhibits form the State Hermitage Museum should dance side by side … I look forward to the challenge of working with contemporary art in this context, hoping to make an exhibition that is intelligent and playful.”

Until last year, Berlin-based König was the director of the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, where he had worked since 2000. Before that he was a professor at the Städelschule, a contemporary fine arts academy in Frankfurt, and a founding director of Portikus, an exhibition hall, also in Frankfurt.

Manifesta was launched 19 years ago in response to the new social, cultural and political reality that emerged in the aftermath of the Cold War. The roving festival aims to bring contemporary art to new territories and in the past has been held in Rotterdam, Holland (1996); Ljubljana, Slovenia (2000); and Murcia and Catagena, Spain (2010).