KØS engages two forward-thinking, internationally oriented curators to realise new strategic initiatives

KØS has appointed Charlotte Sprogøe and Irene Campolmi as senior curators to contribute to the realisation of the museum’s ambitious strategic initiatives for 2024-2025, including a permanent art historical main exhibition in the museum building, in interchange with significant international art projects in public spaces in Denmark.

Charlotte Sprogøe has been appointed as of 1 May 2023 and will curate the museum’s new main attraction in the form of an international art historical main exhibition for the museum building, in interaction with prominent site-specific art projects and performances for public spaces both locally and nationally.

In March 2023, Charlotte Sprogøe completed her PhD thesis on ‘Exhibition as Psycho-Aesthetic Form and Backdrop as Character’ which presents a revised concept of art and site-specificity, and researches art exhibitions as living forms connected with their surroundings. In addition, Sprogøe has directed the artistic research project ‘Site Uncertain’ at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, focusing on a new curatorial understanding of the commissioning of art outside the art institution.

Prior to that, Charlotte Sprogøe has headed a large number of successful exhibitions in public spaces, including the triennial ‘Skulptur Odense 14 – Still Waters Run Deep’ with Kunstmuseum Brandts, and most recently the exhibition ‘Copenhagen – Red Light Green Light’ at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, together with a number of off-site locations in Copenhagen, as well as the performance exhibition ‘CAT COW’ with the artist Nina Beier in the barn of Kunsthal Rønnebæksholm forming a central part of the Bikuben Foundation’s Exhibition Prize, ‘Vision’ 2020. Sprogøe has previously worked as head curator at Kunsthal Aarhus, as artistic director of Tranen and Copenhagen Photo Festival, as project manager and communicator at SMK (the National Gallery of Denmark) and as art consultant at Louisiana, etc.

Irene Campolmi has been appointed as of 1 September 2023. In 2022, Irene Campolmi curated the KØS exhibition ‘Realistic Utopias’, and has collaborated with the museum on the development of a future site-specific art project. As part of the realisation of the museum’s new initiatives, Irene Campolmi will develop a unique programme of dynamic thematic exhibitions and art projects on an international scale, linking the museum building with public spaces and contexts, both physical and digital.

For the past twelve years, Irene Campolmi has worked as a freelance curator and researcher at international and Danish art institutions. In 2021, she won the Bikuben Foundation’s Exhibition Prize, ‘Vision’, together with Copenhagen Contemporary (CC) for the project ‘Yet, it Moves!’ which can be experienced in the spring and summer of 2023 at CC and in Copenhagen’s urban area.

Since 2019, Campolmi has been Head of the Art Program and Curator at Enter Art Fair. Between 2021 and 2022, she was a guest curator at international art museums and festivals across the world, including TANK Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai; Musée d’art de Joliette, The Power Plant in Toronto and Musée d’art contemporain de Baie-Saint-Paul in Canada; Museum of Art Architecture and Technology in Lisbon, Walk&Talk in San Miguel, Azores Islands, and Museum of Art Angra do Heroismo in Terceira, Azores Islands, Portugal. In Copenhagen, Campolmi collaborated with Kunsthal Charlottenborg for three major group and solo exhibitions in 2018, 2019 and 2023, and in 2019 she collaborated with Copenhagen Contemporary. In 2021 she worked as Senior Curator for the art agency Creator Projects, and in this connection, co-curated the performance festival ‘Art In A Day’. Campolmi is part of the faculty of the MA in Curatorial Studies at IED in Florence. She holds an MA in Art History and Museology from the University of Florence and has worked as a researcher in the Max Planck Institute.

Ulrikke Neergaard, Director of KØS, states:

“With the appointment of Charlotte Sprogøe and Irene Campolmi, KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces has gained a strong curatorial team. Sprogøe and Campolmi both possess unique experience, an international outlook and a broad network, and I am very much looking forward to working with them and the KØS team to realise the museum’s new initiatives and reach new audiences across the country.”

Photo of Irene Campolmi by Julie Nymann