CuratorLab is an international one-year course in curating for professionals in the arts, crafts, design and architecture. Established in 1999, CuratorLab is the longest-running curatorial education course in Sweden.
Course Director from 2025 / Senior lecturer Marti Manen has worked intensively with independent and institutional curatorial practice. He has curated exhibitions at the Museo de Historia Natural (Mexico City), Aara (Bangkok), Tabakalera (San Sebastian) Konsthall C (Stockholm), CA2M (Madrid), and Fabra i Coats (Barcelona). Manen was the curator of the Spanish Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale, and curated Momentum10 (Biennial in Moss, Norway, 2019). In the 1990s, he curated five years of exhibitions in his room located in a student flat in Barcelona. Marti Manen has published books including Salir de la exposición (Leaving the Exhibition) (Consonni), Contarlo todo sin saber cómo (Telling everything not knowing how) (CA2M), and When Lines Are Time (Miró Foundation Barcelona). Between 2018 and 2026 Marti Manen was Director of Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm.
Guest lecturer 2027-28: Andrea Rodrigo
Guest Lecturers 2025–26: Carmen Lael Hines and Pontus Pettersson
Together with Martí Manen, Carmen Lael Hines and Pontus Pettersson contribute to CuratorLab by sharing their expertise and inviting guests to engage in discussions around platforms and performativity.
Course Director 2014-2024 / Senior lecturer Joanna Warsza is an interdependent curator, editor and writer. She was a co-curator of the Polish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale with the work of Małgorzata Mirga-Tas, the first Roma artist in the history of the Biennale. Together with Övül Ö. Durmusoglu she co-curated Die Balkone in Berlin, the 3rd and the 4th Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo. She is an editor of several publications in the fields of politics, public sphere, performativity and feminist histories, recent ones including Red Love. A Reader on Alexandra Kollontai (co-edited with Maria Lind and Michele Masucci), and And Warren Niesłuchowski Was There: Guest, Host, Ghost (co-edited with Sina Najafi). Originally from Warsaw, she lives in Berlin and occasionally in Stockholm.
Under the directorship of Joanna Warsza, CuratorLab tested advocacy as a curatorial form at the Visible Temporary Parliament; analyzed the topic of migration in the public collection of the Malmö Konstmuseum; co-edited a reader on love and revolution drawing on the legacy of the Bolshevik revolutionary Alexandra Kollontai together with the artist Dora García at Tensta Konsthall; re-staged the "Operaist Trial 1977-78" with the artist Rossella Biscotti at Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, curated the Degree Show of Konstfack in 2022, the public program of the 4. Autostrada Biennale in Kosovo and public programs in Kiruna at KIN Konstmuseet I Norr.
Guest lecturer 2014-2024: Maria Lind is a curator, writer and educator. She was the director of Stockholm's Tensta konsthall 2011-18, the artistic director of the 11th Gwangju Biennale, the director of the graduate program, CCS Bard College (2008-2010) and director of Iaspis in Stockholm (2005-2007). Since 2023 Maria Lind is a director of KIN, Konstmuseet I Norr in Kiruna.
Curatorial assistant for 2022/2023: Hana Halilaj is an independent curator and a recent graduate of Curatorial Studies at CCS Bard. She lives and works in Prishtina and serves as advisor, mediator and curatorial assistant between CuratorLab and the 4th Autostrada Biennale.
Curatorial assistant for 2023/2024: Anastasia Shestak
Term 2025/2026
For CuratorLab 2025/26, the programme explored curatorial ideas around the concepts of platforms and performativity. Curators, artists, choreographers, and theoreticians were invited to Stockholm to establish dialogues with the CuratorLab participants. Carmen Lael Hines and Pontus Pettersson were invited as guest lecturers and proposed specific guests to be part of the programme.
The group made a research trip to Barcelona to meet with professionals in the city, analyse artistic and cultural structures, and explore urban structures through the concepts of platforms and performativity.
The CuratorLab participants developed their own individual curatorial projects and presented them publicly at Moderna Museet.
Participants: Florian Auer, Laisa Conde, Johan Devigo, Tina Helmersson Landgren, Aleksandra Jarosz Laszlo, Dafne Leidi, Therese Nilsson, Vanesa Peña, Marybeth Sandell
Term 2024/25
During this term, CuratorLab celebrated its 25th anniversary with a curatorial festival organized together with the 2024/25 CuratorLab participants.
For the 2024–2025 academic year, in collaboration with Mint Stockholm, CuratorLab focused on collective research and curatorial practices that engage with sound and temporalities. Participants met with curators and artists working with sound-based practices, explored the challenges of time-based production within institutional frameworks, and connected with organizations centered on sound and experimental music.
The curatorial festival Resonant Field was organized and produced by CuratorLab participants across Stockholm, featuring a series of curatorial and artistic interventions around the concept of sound. The festival explored resonance as both a curatorial and artistic method, presenting sonic expressions, performances, narratives, and language-based works that reverberated throughout the city. Through diverse sites and voices, Resonant Field became a space for shared listening, storytelling, and attunement to the world around us.
Term 2023/2024
A year in which we worked in and with Sápmi region on the curatorial projects with and from Umeå to Kiruna.