KHB Gallery Board
KHB Gallery Board
In connection with the establishment of a new, independent state-subsidized organization from January 1st 2020, the Kunsthalle Bratislava has established the KHB Gallery Board as the main professional advisory body of the organisation's statutory body. While the usual role of a Gallery Board is mainly to approve the exhibition plan, the competencies of the KHB Gallery Board will be much broader.
The draft statute of the Gallery Board already states that it is a “collective and advisory body especially in the field of creating the exhibition plan of the Kunsthalle Bratislava“ and it represents a platform for the exchange of expert opinions in the field of contemporary visual art and its direction. The Board may also discuss other activities of the KHB, e.g. in the field of documentation, education, additional programs, fundraising, marketing communication, etc. It is entitled to submit proposals for the improvement of KHB's activities."
The first group to evaluate and determine the direction of Kunsthalle Bratislava in the next three years, will have seven members. So far, six leading local and Czech personalities with a rich international agenda and a reputation have accepted the nomination and honorary membership in the Board. For the last seventh place in the Board, the KHB plans to offer the representative of the general partner of the institution (currently in process).
The following were appointed members of the KHB Gallery Board in the period 2020 - 2023:
1) Bohunka Koklesová
2) Michal Novotný
3) Zuzana Megová
4) Lýdia Pribišová
5) Vít Havránek
6) Gábor Hushegy - untill 31th December 2020
7) the representative of the general partner of the KHB
BOHUNKA KOKLESOVÁ (*1972) works at the Department of Theory and History of Art of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She is engaged in research, publishing and curatorial activities. She is a member of AICA – International Association of Art Critics.
Her research is focused on the relationship between art and politics, the study of totalitarian regimes, art and visual culture of the 1940s and 1950s. She has published two monographs on the subject: V tieni Tretej ríše, oficiálne fotografie slovenského štátu (In the Shadow of the Third Reich: Official Photographs of the Slovak State, 2009) and Súmrak doby, prelamovaná história, pamäť, fotografia (The Dawn of an Era, A Broken History, Memory, Photography, 2018).
The focus of her curatorial work is on the contemporary art and photography. She has prepared a number of exhibitions for domestic and foreign audiences. She is a member of several professional councils and foundation institutions supporting the development of art and culture in Slovakia. She has received several national awards for her work. Since 2019 she has been the Dean of the Academy of Fine Arts and Design.
MICHAL NOVOTNÝ (*1985) is the director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery in Prague. Since 2011, he has run the Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA and from 2016 together with Jiří Černický also the Studio of Painting at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.
In 2018, he prepared curatorial projects for the Passerelle Centre for Contemporary Art in Brest, together with Jiří Kovanda, a site-specific project for the Black Cube Art Museum in Denver, and with Anna Daučíková the exhibition at the State of Concept in Athens. The two-year curatorial project under the title Orient, Meditation on the Eastern European Identity, featured 45 artists and travelled to the Contemporary Art Centre in Riga, BOZAR in Brussels, and Bunkier Sztuki in Krakow. In November 2018, he has opened a group exhibition at Art in General in New York.
He participated in residential and research programmes at the Delfina Foundation in London (2016), Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans (2014), Contemporary Art Museum in Rijeka (2014), Design Cloudin Chicago (2014), Villa Arson in Nice (2013), and Independent Curators International in New York (2011).
ZUZANA MEGOVÁ (*1983) is the Chief State Counselor for the Section of Arts and Creativity of the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic. She was born in Bratislava, where she studied journalism and doctoral studies in the field of mass media studies. During her studies, she completed a study visit at the university in Heidelberg, Germany, and Tilburg, the Netherlands. After graduating from the university, she completed an internship at a Berlin weekly and a radio station in Nuremberg, Germany. She has been working at the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic since 2012. As the Director General of the section, she coordinated several strategic tasks of the Ministry, such as the establisment of the Slovak Arts Council (Fond na podporu umenia), where she was the Vice-Chairwoman of the Slovak Arts Council Board from the beginning until 2018. In the years 2014 – 2018 she was the coordinator of the Strategy for the Development of Culture (Stratégia rozvoja kultúry) and the two related action plans approved by the Government of the Slovak Republic. After the successful launch of the Slovak Arts Council, she created the conditions and co-created the legislative framework for the establishment of the Minority Culture Fund (Fond na podporu kultúry národnostných menšín). During the presidency of the Slovak Republic in the Council of the EU, she chaired the Cultural Affairs Committee in Brussels. She has long been involved in policy making and improving the environment for the live arts sector, the institutional anchoring of creativity and contemporary art, as well as projects to present Slovak art abroad.
LÝDIA PRIBIŠOVÁ (*1980) is a curator and art historian based in Bratislava. Since 2006, she is Slovak editor of Flash Art Czech & Slovak Edition, since2015 managing editor. 2013–2015 she used to work as project coordinator in tranzit.sk. In 2012 she founded nonprofit initiative PILOT. In 2007 and 2011, she co-curated Slovak section of Prague Biennale, in 2019 she co-curated Kaunas Biennial in Lithuania. In 2019, she was guest curator of Hit Gallery, preparing the whole year program. In 2013, she obtained PhD degree at theUniversity La Sapienza in Rome, in 2016 she published the book La Quadriennale di Roma. Da ente autonomo a fondazione (Quadriennale of Rome. From Public Body to Foundation) based on this research. She is a member of AICA.
She collaborated with many institutions and galleries in various countries (short selection): Museum MAXXI and AlbumArte, Accademia di Belle Arti di Romain Italy; Kunsthalle Athena in Greece; Museum of Artin Cluj-Napoca, National Gallery in Tirana, OI Futuro in Rio De Janeiro; Zentrum fűr Kunst und Urbanistikin Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Artin Novi Sad, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka, ISCP in NewYork, and tranzit.org, Kunsthalle Bratislava, HIT Gallery, Medium Gallery and SPACE in Bratislava.
VÍT HAVRÁNEK(*1971) is theorist and organiser. He graduated in art history from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University in Prague, and was awarded a PhD degree in 2006 (dissertation: Authentic Structures, Personalities and Structures of Interpretation in Czechoslovak Art 1949 – 2004). He worked as a curator of the Modern and Contemporary Art Collection of the National Gallery in Prague (1996 – 1998), and the Prague City Gallery (1998 – 2002). Since 2002 he has been the director of the transit.cz Contemporary Art Initiative, which he co-founded. He lectures on contemporary art at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Vit Havránek is a co-founder of the Pas group(production of present-day activities, along with Tomáš Vaňek and Jiří Skála). Havránek’s theoretical studies cover a number of artists distinguished by their reviewed interest in the new forms of Conceptual art (Ján Mančuška, Jiří Skála) at the turn of the 20th and 21stcenturies. Havránek is credited with a new perception of the work produced by Jiří Kovanda, Július Koller and Stano Filko.
He was the curator and co-curator of the exhibitions: Manifesta 8, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art, Murcia, Cartagena, Spain; Monument to Transformation, 2007 – 2010, Centro Monthermoso Vitoria; Transit – Auditorium, Stage, Backstage, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (2006); Me, exhibition in three acts, Secession, Vienna (2006); Definition of Everyday Life, Prague Biennale 2, Prague (2005); Lanterna Magika, Espace Electra, Paris (2002); Jiří Kovanda, DUMB, Brno (2004); Otto Piene, Prague City Gallery, Prague (2002); action, word, movement, space, Prague City Gallery, Prague (1999) and a few others. He is an editor of the publisher jrp | Ringier Art Publisher, Zürich (Transit series: Atlas to Transformation, Jiří Skála, Kateřina Šedá, Jan Mančuška, Jiří Kovanda, and so on), editor of books and exhibition catalogues: Autobiographies (2006); The Need to Document (2005); Lanterna Magika (2002); action, word, movement, space (1999). His essays were published in books and catalogues: Manifesta 8, Silvana Editoriale (2010); Promesses du passé, Centre Pompidou (2010); Reconsidering Documentary and Contemporary Art, Sternberg Press, CCS Bard (2009); Voids, Centre Pompidou, Kunsthalle Bern (2009); Right About Now, Valiz (2007); Yves Klein, Centre Pompidou, Springer Vienna, New York (2007), and many others. Havránek publishes his essays and articles in Artist, Springerin, Manifesta Journal, Flash Art and a few others. He lives and works in Prague.