Catherine Nichols podcast

In the latest episode of the acb Galéria podcast, we had the privilege of hosting Catherine Nichols, curator at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof. During her visit to Budapest in mid-December, Catherine took part in the launch event of Flowers of Life, the newly published book accompanying Selma Selman's exhibition at Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle, to which she contributed as an author. Before the presentation, we sat down with Catherine to explore the poetics of art curation, the dynamic Berlin art scene, and her unique career journey from literary theory to the world of contemporary art.

Catherine Nichols is a Berlin-based curator and writer with a remarkable career spanning over two decades. Since 2001, she has curated over twenty monographic and cultural-historical projects, including several high-profile exhibitions. Among her notable works are Beuys: We Are the Revolution, The End of the 20th Century: The Best is Yet to Come, and Capital: Debt – Territory – Utopia, all presented at Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Nationalgalerie, in collaboration with Eugen Blume.

Her recent achievements include the groundbreaking exhibition Everyone is an Artist: Cosmopolitical Exercises with Joseph Beuys at the K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen museum in Düsseldorf, co-curated with Isabelle Malz and Eugen Blume. Catherine also served as the artistic director of the beuys 2021 program, orchestrating a year-long series of over 30 cultural events, an online radio station, a symposium, and an interdisciplinary laboratory examining radical democratic forms of collectivity. In 2022, she played a pivotal role as the Creative Mediator for Manifesta 14 in Prishtina, further solidifying her reputation as a visionary in contemporary art and cultural discourse.