Turin's GAM has a new director: she is Chiara Bertola

GAM - Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Torino has a new director: she is Chiara Bertola, from Turin, born in 1961, whose appointment was announced a few hours ago by the Board of Directors of the Fondazione Torino Musei, which has thus brought to a close the expression of interest for the collection of applications. Chiara Bertola thus succeeds Riccardo Passoni. The commission (composed of Sylvain Bellenger, director general of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte; Elena Filipovic, director of the Kunstmuseum in Basel; Lorenzo Giusti, director of GAMeC in Bergamo; Chiara Parisi, director of the Centre Pompidou-Metz; Alberto Salvadori, Magazzino Italian Art New York and Director ICA Milan) reviewed all the curricula and projects prepared by the participants in the selection process who met the requirements and heard at interview a shortlist of candidates whose profiles were deemed most in line with the requirements of the notice. +

Following the evaluations and hearings conducted, the Commission then concluded its work and returned to the Foundation the names of the profiles deemed suitable for the position and then submitted to the Board of Directors. On the basis of the results of the assessments and the reasons given by the Commission, the Board of Directors, with convinced and unanimous consensus, appointed Chiara Bertola, noting in the profile a solid experience in the management of museum institutions and a deep understanding of the specificities of the Museum and its needs.

Born in Turin in 1961, Chiara Bertola currently lives and works in Venice. She is curator of the contemporary art project “Conserving the Future” at the Fondazione Querini Stampalia in Venice from 1999 to the present. Since 2014, she has been a founding partner of the Venice Gardens Foudation in Venice with the task of restoring gardens and growing art there. Creator and curator of the FURLA Prize for young Italian artists from 2000 to 2015, she was artistic director of Hangar Bicocca in Milan from 2009 to 2012: here she conceived and curated the experimental project Terre Vulnerabili a growing exhibition, a year-long exhibition in 4 stages of growth. From 1996 to 1998 she was president of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation in Venice. She was also among the founding curators of the Ars Aevi Project for the establishment of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Sarajevo, and also served as curator of the “Venice Pavilion” at the Venice International Art Biennale and the XV Quadriennale in Rome. She has curated several solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad including those of Marisa Merz, Giovanni Anselmo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Elisabetta Di Maggio, Mona Hatoum, Haris Epaminonda, Giulio Paolini, Lothar Baumgarten, Joseph Kosuth, Roman Opalka, Maria Teresa Sartori, Paolo Icaro, Christian Boltansky, Hans Peter Feldmann, Ilya&Emilia Kabakov, Georges Adeagbo, Remo Salvadori, Kiki Smith, Maria Morganti, Jimmie Durham. He published the book Curing Art dedicated to the figure of the curator (2008).

“I express full satisfaction with the appointment of Chiara Bertola as director of GAM,” says Massimo Broccio, president of Fondazione Torino Musei. “I thank the qualified committee for its valuable work that has allowed the Board of Directors to identify a professional with solid experience in the management of museum institutions and up to the task of ensuring the change necessary to meet GAM’s future challenges. Conservation, preservation, and research clearly remain the core mission of the museum, but by themselves these attributes are not sufficient to interpret the new functions of a museum institution in the 21st century. The museum must be an active subject, instrumental to people’s social and cultural evolution and progress, with a vocation for listening to and interacting with current events and the present. A wise, complex and living organism; a place of encounter and confrontation that looks to the future in an active way. In her project Chiara Bertola has shown a deep understanding of the specificity of our institution and of these needs. I am particularly pleased that she is the one to take up the challenge of writing a new and important page in the history of the first Civic Art Gallery born in Italy.”

“I would like to thank the Fondazione Torino Musei for the trust they have placed in me in having me as the new Director of GAM,” says newly elected Director Chiara Bertola, “an institution that represents an important cultural legacy to be emphasized, ignited and reactivated with vitality and an eye toward the future, bringing out unusual interpretations. I assume this position aware of the responsibility of the role and honored to carry on the history of GAM and the work of those who have preceded me.”

Turin's GAM has a new director: she is Chiara Bertola

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