Nicolaus Schafhausen

Nicolaus Schafhausen (born 1965 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a curator. Since October 2012 he is the director of Kunsthalle Wien.

Education

Born in Düsseldorf in 1965, Schafhausen studied art history at the Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) and the Ludwig-Maximillian-Universität in Munich.^[1]

Career

Before starting his career as curator in 1990, Schafhausen worked as an artist.^[2] During a scholarship at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin he decided to found the Galerie Lukas & Hoffmann together with the artist Markus Schneider. They named the gallery after the birth names of their mothers. In the gallery, initially located in Berlin and later based in Cologne, Schafhausen has curated several exhibitions, including the first exhibitions of artists that are now internationally successful, such as Kai Althoff, Olafur Eliasson, Carsten Höller, and Antje Majewski. During the 1990s, he served as the artistic director at the Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, and he was director of the Frankfurter Kunstverein from 1999 - 2005. He was the founding director of the "European Kunsthalle" initiative in Cologne, which began in 2005. Between 2006 and 2011, Schafhausen served as the artistic and financial director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary art in Rotterdam.

Schafhausen was the curator of the German Pavilion for the 52nd in 2007 and the 53rd in 2009 Venice Biennial

His thematic orientated group exhibitions have in the most part examined specific art practice in relation to contemporary social-political issues. This approach was made visible in projects such as "Populism" at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, CAC in Vilnius, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2005. His curated group exhibitions include: "Adorno, The possibility of the impossible" (2003), "Neue Welt", "non-places", "New Heimat" (2001-2002). He curated several one-person exhibitions, including Kai Althoff, Gerard Byrne, Olafur Eliasson, Brian Jungen, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Billy Apple, Mathias Poledna, Stephen Prina and Cerith Wyn Evans.

References