HAMBURG.- The American curator, lecturer and writer Toby Kamps (*1964) will become the new Head of the Modernist Collection at the Hamburger Kunsthalle on 15 January 2025. The extensive collection, which includes paintings created between 1900 and 1960, is one of the most important holdings in Germany with its important groups of works and outstanding individual objects. After an international call for applications, the Kunsthalle has chosen Kamps as a curator who brings with him both extensive knowledge of German, European and American art history and many years of experience as head of the Menil Collection in Houston, one of the most important American collections of modern art. Toby Kamps follows Dr. Karin Schick, who moved to the Hilti Art Foundation, Liechtenstein.


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Toby Kamps began his career at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and has worked as a curator and director at institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, as well as in Houston at the Contemporary Arts Museum, the Blaffer Art Museum of the University of Houston and the Menil Collection. Most recently he was director of the White Cube Gallery in London. His numerous exhibition and publication projects include survey exhibitions on the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, William N. Copley, Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg and Wols. Toby Kamps is a graduate of the Williams College Graduate Program in Art History in Massachusetts and Bowdoin College in Maine and was a fellow at the Center for Curatorial Leadership in New York and the Getty Museum Leadership Institute in Berkeley, California. He has written contributions to numerous museum catalogues and is editor at large for the art and culture journal The Brooklyn Rail.

Alexander Klar, Director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle: »As another internationally renowned curator Toby Kamps is an ideal addition to the Hamburger Kunsthalle's team of Heads of Collection. In addition to his expertise, he brings a new perspective to our European-oriented collection. I am delighted that with him our collection will experience a new interpretation that will allow us to connect it to global modernism.«

Toby Kamps: »It is a great honor for me to support the Hamburger Kunsthalle in this position. The collection of modernism is unique and the museum's exhibitions and interpretation programs are exemplary. I look forward to sharing the treasures of the Hamburger Kunsthalle with the public together with my new colleagues and putting the international development of modernism in a new light.«


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