Merano Kunsthaus has a new, young director: she is Martina Oberprantacher

A new director for the Merano Kunsthaus, the South Tyrolean city’s contemporary art museum, which has been housed since 2001 in the historic Sparkasse building and is managed by the Merano Arte - Kunst Meran association. The board of the association chaired by Herta Wolf Torggler, which will celebrate its 25th birthday in 2021 (Merano Arte was in fact founded in 1996), has chosen the young Martina Oberprantacher as its new director.

Born in Bozen/Bolzano in 1979, Oberprantacher studied art history, philosophy, cultural studies, prehistory, protohistory, and Romanism at the University of Innsbruck and the Free University of Berlin, and specialized in curating and mediation at the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. She has worked at various institutions in the region (Museion in Bolzano, the seventh edition of Manifesta held in Trentino, and others), especially in the field of art and cultural education, and because of her qualities in this field she was, from 2013 to 2020, responsible for art education and mediation at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich. Through her work, she was able to deal with the systems linking art, exhibition practice, and mediation, both theoretically and practically, as well as production and reception within cultural institutions. Over the years, Martina Oberprantacher has advocated a participatory approach and a critical, anti-discriminatory perspective in relation to museums, both in exhibition and mediation. The position in Merano is her first try at museum leadership.

Merano Arte lets it be known that Martina Oberprantacher won over the board with her international experience, her aptitude for teamwork, her enthusiasm for the Kunsthaus’s future activities, and a clear and structured management plan for the Kunsthaus. “Martina Oberprantacher,” reads a note, “intends to institutionalize Kunst Meran Merano Arte, which originally began as an experiment in contemporary art, and lead the Kunsthaus into the future as an active, creative and open platform. The Kunsthaus will continue to be a meeting place for people interested in the cultural scene. It will also be a think tank for new ideas that are to be pursued collectively. Accordingly, Kunst Meran Merano Arte will be a forum for discussion in which different perspectives on art, culture and society can be compared; it will stand as a field of experimentation for as yet unknown artistic processes and discourses; and it will be a space for activities devoted to learning situations in unusual ways, with art and through art. Through a wide-ranging program, the Kunsthaus will want to represent an academy for the city community, supporting the concept of a social arena in which the objects of negotiation are art, society and politics, and will always challenge itself as an institution dedicated to learning.”

Martina Oberprantacher will take office this coming June 16 (her first task will be to assist the board in choosing the curatorial position that will support her in the coming years) and said she is excited to take over as director of Kunst in Merano.

Merano Kunsthaus has a new, young director: she is Martina Oberprantacher

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