Eugenio Viola is the new director of the Madre Museum in Naples

Eugenio Viola is the new director of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts – Madre Museum in Naples. The appointment was officially announced by the president of the Campania Region, Roberto Fico, and the regional councilor for culture, Onofrio Giustino Angelo Cutaia, who emphasized the significance of the choice and the museum’s strategic role in the region’s cultural development. The new director stated: “I would like to express my gratitude to the Campania Region, the Donnaregina Foundation, the Board of Directors, the Commission, and all those who followed this selection process with care and diligence. I accept this appointment with great emotion and a deep sense of responsibility. Returning to the Madre Museum holds special significance for me: it is the museum where my institutional career took its first steps and a place that helped shape my understanding of the museum as an institution—not merely as an exhibition space, but as a living organism of thought, connection, cultural production, and transformation. I am returning to where so much began, with the desire to give something back to a museum, a city, and a region that have profoundly shaped my journey. I am not returning to the Madre to look back, but to put what I have learned elsewhere at the service of its future.”

A Neapolitan curator, art critic, and museum director with over twenty years of international experience, she has curated more than one hundred exhibitions throughout her career, collaborating with museums, foundations, biennials, and art centers in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia. For Viola, this marks a return, as he had previously worked at the Madre from 2009 to 2016 in the role of curator at large. From 2019 to 2026, Viola served as artistic director of MAMBO—Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, where he defined the institution’s artistic and curatorial vision, contributing to its reorganization and the strengthening of its national and international standing. Meanwhile, he was also appointed curator of the Italian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale .

The appointment followed a public selection process which, after an initial review of qualifications, included an interview designed to assess the candidates’ expertise and the museum projects they presented in relation to the Foundation’s programming and positioning. Five candidates were admitted to the interview, selected from among the twenty-one deemed eligible in the evaluation of qualifications, out of a total of thirty-three applications submitted. As the publication further reports, in the project presented by Viola, the Madre is outlined as an open, international, pluralistic, communicative, and sustainable museum, with a strategy grounded in the relationship between Naples and Campania, the Mediterranean, the Global South, and the Italian art scene in dialogue with the international context.

Eugenio Viola has over twenty years of international experience. In 2026, he was appointed director of the Madre museum, an institution with which he had already had a significant relationship between 2009 and 2016, during which time he contributed to the realization of major exhibition projects. Before returning to Naples, from 2019 to 2026, Viola served as artistic director of MAMBO —Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, in Colombia—where he defined the institution’s artistic and curatorial vision, contributing to its reorganization and repositioning both nationally and internationally.

During his tenure in Colombia, he curated over fifty exhibitions, organizing the first institutional presentations in the country of artists such as Teresa Margolles, Voluspa Jarpa, Alexander Apóstol, Ana Gallardo, Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, Kader Attia, Dor Guez, and Seba Calfuqueo.

Also in 2025, Eugenio Viola was appointed chief curator of the 24th Bienal de Arte Paiz, titled “El árbol del mundo,” the most ambitious edition in the history of Guatemala’s biennial, founded in 1978, considered the sixth oldest in the world and the second longest-running in Latin America.

Between 2017 and 2019, he served as Senior Curator at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts in Australia, while from 2009 to 2016 he worked at the Madre Museum in Naples, where he co-curated internationally significant exhibitions, including the first institutional presentations in Italy dedicated to Boris Mikhailov and Francis Alÿs, as well as the creation of a permanent installation by Daniel Buren. Throughout his career, he has curated over one hundred international exhibitions, collaborating with museums, foundations, biennials, and art centers in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Australia.

As a guest curator, he has worked with artists such as Su Hui-Yu, Patrick Hamilton, Giulia Cenci, Regina José Galindo, Karol Radziszewski, Mark Raidpere, Marina Abramović, Francesco Jodice, and ORLAN, collaborating with institutions such as the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the GAM, and the MAC in Santiago, Chile, the Recoleta Cultural Center in Buenos Aires, the PAC in Milan, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the EKKM in Tallinn, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, and the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain de Saint-Étienne. Among her most significant assignments are curating the Estonian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015 and the Italian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, both of which received widespread critical acclaim.

Viola also holds a Ph.D. in Methods and Methodologies of Archaeological and Art-Historical Research, has edited over sixty catalogs and books, and is the author of numerous essays and scholarly publications.

Statements

“Best wishes for success to Eugenio Viola,” said Roberto Fico, president of the Campania Region. “He will put his expertise and vision to work for the Madre to make the museum an ever-more central part of contemporary artistic dynamics—a driving force for creativity capable of identifying trends, exploring new and diverse artistic languages, and intensifying exchanges and cross-pollination between Naples and the international scene. As a region, we are convinced of the importance of the arts and culture sector for community growth, for supporting new talent, and for the region’s development itself. We want projects of great vision and quality, as well as people with professionalism and expertise, to be valued; for this reason, we will continue to widely publicize calls for proposals and notices for open, accessible, and participatory selection processes that serve the public interest.”

“Today,” says Culture Councilor Onofrio Cutaia, “we celebrate the homecoming of an outstanding son of this land: Eugenio Viola, following his international experiences in Australia and Colombia, is the new Artistic Director of the Madre Museum. His approach is open, pluralistic, and cosmopolitan, allowing him to fully embody the public significance of his role. In his vision, the Madre engages with major global networks without ever succumbing to parochialism, yet remaining deeply rooted in the community and breaking down all barriers to access to culture. Eugenio Viola speaks to the world by making the city of Naples, through its contemporary art museum, a transnational hub capable of examining the tensions of the present, in connection with the broader Mediterranean, Africa, and Latin America. This extraordinary program, which will extend extensively to the urban peripheries and inland areas with educational programs of excellence and inclusion projects for vulnerable communities, transforms the museum into a widespread, democratic, and activist public infrastructure. My thoughts also go to Eva Fabbris, whom I thank for her work. To Eugenio, I offer my support and best wishes for his work.”

“I welcome with satisfaction the appointment of Eugenio Viola as the new Director of the Madre,” states Angela Tecce, president of the Donnaregina Foundation for Contemporary Arts. “Eugenio is returning to his hometown and to the museum where his career as a curator began—a career that has since been enriched by his leadership of prestigious international museums as well as major exhibitions, among which I would like to mention the Italian Pavilion at the 2022 Venice Biennale. Over the years, I have followed his work from afar but with great interest. My thanks go to Eva Fabbris, the outgoing director, for these years of shared commitment and for having elevated the Donnaregina Foundation and the Madre Museum, during her three-year tenure, to an unprecedented level of prominence and standing among European institutions dedicated to contemporary art.”

Eugenio Viola is the new director of the Madre Museum in Naples

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