Catherine Nichols has been appointed curator of the 18th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art.
Nichols, an Australian scholar, curator and writer living in Berlin, ‘encourages dialog between cultures by working in close collaboration with artists’, the Artistic Director of the Biennale Isabelle Bertolotti said in a statement. ‘We particularly appreciated her artistic choices for Manifesta 14 in Pristina, Kosovo, which highlighted her sensitivity to history, venues and the role of the public, inviting artists to produce works in connection with their environment.’
Currently a curator at Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, Nichols works across contemporary art, cultural history and interdisciplinary research. She has curated numerous monographic and thematic art exhibitions and was the curator of the European Nomadic Biennial in 2022. She has also co-edited and authored several publications including The New Designer: Design as a Profession for Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau (2023); Otherwise (2022), the companion book to Manifesta 14 Pristina; Shine on me: Wir und die Sonne (2018) and Black Mountain College: An Interdisciplinary Experiment, 1933–1957 (2015).
‘The Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art has long been an ambitious space for artistic enquiry and political imagination, a site where art engages with the world, indeed with the planet, in all its complexity. I am immensely honoured to be invited to curate the 18th edition of the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, to build upon its rich legacy while embracing new forms of artistic and intellectual exploration,’ Nichols said of her appointment.
Established in 1991, the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art is, alongside the Dance Biennale, one of the two major international events that constitutes the Biennale de Lyon.
The 18th edition will run from September to December 2026.
