Barbara steiner

Barbara Steiner (born 1964) is an Austrian art historian, curator, author, and editor.
Barbara Steiner is an Austrian art historian, curator, author, and editor.
Barbara Steiner was born Bajla Zyskind in Warsaw, Poland in 1925.

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Talk with Barbara Steiner, head director of Kunsthaus Graz – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Is it possible – and in what conditions – to build a critical institution of contemporary art? How should art institutions undertake diagnoses regarding the globally arising political, social and economic changes? These are the two basic questions posed by the Curating Institution project, developed by the Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art.

These questions were also posed to Barbara Steiner, the head director of Kunsthaus in Graz. Considering the fact that contemporary art functions in the processes of the social economy and that they often determine the principles of participation in artistic circulation, Barbara Steiner draws attention to a significant element, which often disappears from the art institution’s field of view—the sense of community and common good. During the presentation, she will also refer to the subject of the place itself—the exhibiting institution. Using

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Dr. Barbara Steiner

Barbara Steiner has been a board member and director of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation since September 2021.

After leading positions at art institutions, including the Foundation Gallery for Contemporary Art in Leipzig and the Kunsthaus Graz, and teaching at universities, including the University of Art and Design Linz, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig, Steiner took over the management of the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation. In her theoretical and practical work, she deals with structural and institutional issues as well as the framework conditions of cultural production.

In addition to artist monographs, Steiner has published a series of thematic books on (public and private) museums, curatorship, institutional politics/economies and relational spatial concepts in the visual arts, architecture and urban planning. She studied art history and political science at the University of Vienna. She wrote her doctoral thesis on the ideology of the white exhibition space.

Steiner is a jury member for the City

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Barbara Steiner

Where did the idea for your portrait’s staging and setting come from?

We didn’t have an idea. It was just a hot summer day.

How do you experience Jewish life in Berlin?

I experience Jewish life in Berlin as religiously varied, multicultural, increasingly modern. But I sometimes also miss the old Berlin Jewish community from 20 years ago, back when I moved to Berlin.

Describe your life in Berlin in three adjectives.

Traditional and at the same time eclectic, sometimes stressful.

What would your wish be for the future of Jewish life in Berlin?

More courage to express diversity. It ought to get even louder, maybe also more defiant.