News

Maria Lind joins IHME Helsinki Advisory Board

05.12.2023
Drawing of a female face with areas of different size and colors green, lilac, blue, brown, yellow and red. At the bottom of the drawing is a text Maria Lind.
Portrait of Maria Lind by Bernd Krauss.

Curator and museum director Maria Lind is joining IHME Helsinki’s Advisory Board. Lind has had a long trajectory as a director of art institutions, curator of biennials, and teacher, as well as being a Professor at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. She has published books and written extensively about contemporary art in newspapers and magazines, as well as exhibition publications. Lind received the 2009 Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement. In September 2023, she was appointed Director of Kin, Konstmuseet i Norr, in Kiruna. She moved there from the post of Counsellor of Cultural Affairs at the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow.

“I am honoured to be invited to join the Advisory Board of IHME, whose unique activities I have followed with great interest since the start. At this moment in time, it feels particularly pertinent to continue and deepen the approaches and discussions that IHME has spearheaded,”

was Lind’s comment on her new duties.

Paula Toppila, Executive Director and Curator of IHME and Chair of the Advisory Board, says:

“We, the entire Advisory Board, are really happy that Maria Lind is joining us for the next three-year period. Maria has long been an important player in the field of contemporary art, a bold innovator, visionary curator, and director. She is familiar with the goals of IHME’s operations and has been an invited expert at our programme events. It is great to have her involved in thinking about and planning the future of IHME Helsinki.”

Members of the Advisory Board serve three-year terms. Maria Lind joins the working group following the end of Aarhus University Professor Jussi Parikka’s term last June. The other members of the Advisory Board are: Professor Ute Meta Bauer from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore; artist and BIOS Research Unit researcher Antti Majava; and Hanna Guttorm, Senior Researcher in Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki. Maria Lind’s term starts at the beginning of 2024. We thank Jussi Parikka for his good cooperation and expertise.