Tom Engels has been appointed director of Kunstverein München, the museum has announced. The Belgian curator will take over from Maurin Dietrich, who has held the role since 2019 and will remain in office until Engels’s tenure begins on 1 January 2026.
Engels comes from Grazer Kunstverein, where he has served as artistic director since 2021. In 2023, he co-curated the 15th Baltic Triennial in Vilnius, in collaboration with Maya Tounta.
‘I think of Kunstverein München as one of those singular spaces that allow art to shift the cadence of how we think and feel – slowing things down when everything else calls for speed, or quickening something inside us that resists being named,’ Engels said in a statement. ‘Today, such spaces are not a given; they ask for our collective attention and commitment – to be sustained, to be defended – so they can continually be made and remade.’
‘For me, this means inhabiting Kunstverein München as a site to rehearse and renegotiate how we speak, sense, and imagine – not to chase novelty, but to turn to what is at hand and work it differently, until what feels locked into pattern might begin to open up.’
Following his appointment, Engels has picked Line Ebert as the incoming curator. Lucie Pia, who has been part of the museum’s existing team, will continue as assistant curator.
