Moscow’s GES-2 House of Culture has named Italian curator Francesco Bonami as its new artistic director. The institution opened in 2021 before halting programming in 2022 at the start of the Russia-Ukraine War, and is funded by billionaire Leonid Mikhelson’s V-A-C Foundation.
Bonami began his career as an artist, and worked as an editor at Flash Art magazine before going on to serve as the co-curator of Manifesta 3 (2000), the artistic director of the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, and the co-curator of the 2010 Whitney Biennial. He was a senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago for nearly a decade. In 2024, Bonami curated Maurizio Cattelan’s exhibition “Sunday” at Gagosian in New York, the artist’s first solo gallery presentation in 20 years.
Bonami has collaborated with the V-A-C Foundation for over fifteen years. In 2024, he co-curated “Square and Space: From Malevich to GES-2,” an exhibition exploring “the important role of Russian art” in artistic innovation of the 20th century. At the time, Bonami told Artnews that “Sanctions are economic, not cultural. To sanction culture is a white crime that kills people’s souls.” Mikhelson is not on the sanctions list, nor is his daughter, Victoria, who owns GES-2 as of 2023.
“GES-2’s international outlook is integral to its identity, independent of any individual appointment,” the institution told the Art Newspaper, “Francesco Bonami’s appointment reflects this commitment to dialogue and exchange, including the possibility of exhibitions involving artists and cultural practitioners from any country who are open to such engagement.”