New director at the Kunsthaus Meran

Martina Oberprantacher will be the future director of the Merano Kunsthaus

The Kunstverein KUNST MERAN MERANO ARTE is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2021. Since its foundation in 1996, Herta Wolf Torggler has been leading the exhibition and mediation work with great success. Originally located in the Rafflgalerie on Pfarrplatz and since 2001 in the Kunsthaus under the Arcades, Herta Wolf Torggler has worked continuously and successfully in collaboration with Ursula Schnitzer, numerous curators and many employees. Numerous projects, such as Tony Cragg's major sculpture exhibition, the “The last cure” cultural festival before the SALVAR building was demolished, the documentation of the Merano cultural scene between 1945 and 1965, and the latest South Tyrolean architectural history, as well as the implementation of the open-air gallery “Menschenbilder” Herta Wolf Torggler worked tirelessly on the lower Passer promenade, to name just a few. Now she puts her management work in younger hands. In order to ensure a smooth transition of the association activities and a continuous further development of the art house business, she was asked to join the board.

In summer 2019, Herta Wolf Torggler and the association's board had many discussions with competent persons who had applied for the responsible director's job.

Martina Oberprantacher has convinced the board with her structured and clear ideas about the future management of the Kunsthaus Meran. It was quickly agreed that, in addition to organizational talent, international experience and the ability to work in a team, she brings a lot of enthusiasm and confidence for the new challenge.

Oberprantacher wants to further institutionalize KUNST MERAN MERANO ARTE, originally started as an experiment in the field of contemporary art, and lead the Kunsthaus, together with the club members, the board and the previous Kunsthaus team, as a lively, creative and open platform in the future.

The Kunsthaus should continue to be a contact zone for people interested in the contemporary cultural scene. It is supposed to be a laboratory of new ideas that want to be pursued collectively. ART MERAN MERANO ARTE should consequently be a place that develops into a discussion forum for different perspectives on art, culture and society; who sees itself as an experimental field for unknown artistic processes and discourses and who becomes an action space for unusual learning situations with and through art.

With its diverse range of programs, the Kunsthaus is intended to be an academy for the city community that pursues the concept of the social arena, in which the artistic, the social and the political are negotiated and in which the learning institution always questions itself. Proven digital and media technologies are to be expanded in order to be able to reach a larger radius of interest.

Martina Oberprantacher will start working for KUNST MERAN MERANO ARTE on June 16, 2020. Above all, she and the association board will review the many applications for the free curator position and select the person who will closely determine the program of activities by her side in the coming years.

Martina Oberprantacher is very happy to take on the new, diverse and challenging task. The responsible of the Kunsthaus and its team are looking forward to a common future.

Short biography

Martina Oberprantacher (* 1979 in Bozen) studied art history in major and philosophy, cultural studies, prehistory and early history as well as Romance studies in a bundle of subjects at the University of Innsbruck and the Free University of Berlin. After several years of work experience in the field of art and cultural mediation in museums and in large exhibitions (including Museion - Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Bolzano; Manifesta 7 - Trentino / South Tyrol; National Exhibition 2009 in Franzensfeste), she studied Exhibiting & Mediation at the Zurich University of the arts and worked in parallel as a research assistant at the Institute for Art Education at the ZHdK. From September 2013 to May 2020, she was the head of education and mediation at the Städtische Galerie am Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau München. In her work as an art educator, she dealt with the interface between art and its presentation in exhibitions and educational programs within art institutions. Her particular focus was on the connection between theory and practice, production and reception. Over the years, she has pursued a participatory orientation and a discrimination-critical perspective on museums and their exhibition and educational activities.