Emma Enderby (KW Berlin): Curatorial frameworks
Talks on Curatorial Practice
14 NOVEMBER 2025 / 17:00-19:00
The talk by Emma Enderby, Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, will offer a walkthrough of her curatorial practice, tracing a trajectory from early exhibitions to her current work, and will include a presentation of her vision and forthcoming projects for KW. Her curatorial role is conceived as a bridge—connecting artists and audiences, disciplines and contexts—and as a means of dissolving boundaries between performance, sound, film, nightlife, prose, and technology. Enderby’s practice emphasizes the creation of spaces for exploration and dialogue through programs that move fluidly between short-term interventions, live events, and sustained research-based initiatives. Her approach is defined by agility and responsiveness, engaging with pressing cultural and societal issues such as sustainability, innovation, and the shifting dynamics of digital realities. These concerns invite a rethinking of the relationship between the local and the global, reflecting transformations that extend beyond the art world. Her research interests include the intersection of art and ecology, technology, the reconsideration of historical and canonical narratives, interdisciplinary methodologies, art in the public realm, and civic engagement. Exhibition-making, in her view, is always approached through the body—attending to how experience and the transformation of knowledge can be perceived physically and sensorially.
Emma Enderby has been Director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin since May 15, 2024, and is a curator, writer, and lecturer specializing in modern and contemporary art. In February 2025, she opened her first exhibition season at KW with presentations by Matt Copson, Sung Tieu, Miloš Trakilović, and Jessica Ekomane. Before joining KW, Enderby served as Head of Programs and Research/Chief Curator at Haus der Kunst in Munich (2021–2024), where she curated Liliane Lijn. Arise Alive, Tony Cokes: Fragments, or just Moments, and a decentralized exhibition with Rirkrit Tiravanija. As Chief Curator at The Shed in New York, she contributed to the founding of the institution and its multidisciplinary program, curating major exhibitions such as Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates, Tomás Saraceno: Particular Matters, and Ian Cheng: Life After BOB, as well as projects with Trisha Donnelly, Tony Cokes, Oscar Murillo, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Carrie Mae Weems. Earlier roles include work at the Public Art Fund, where she curated Commercial Break, The Language of Things, and Tauba Auerbach: Flow Separation, and at the Serpentine Galleries in London, where she organized exhibitions with Hilma af Klint, Rachel Rose, Trisha Donnelly, and Adrián Villar Rojas. Alongside her institutional work, Enderby is active as a visiting lecturer, critic, and speaker at various universities and institutions, and contributes as an editor and writer to numerous publications and catalogues. She holds degrees from University College London and the University of Oxford.
Free admission.
All talks in English.
All times CET/CEST.
On-site participation without registration. Application for online participation: curating.org