MUNCH Award Honouring artistic freedom

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Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation, Canada. Based in Toronto, Nanibush is the founding director of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of Indigenous curators, writers and artists that last took place at Venice Biennale.

She recently won the Toronto Book Award for her coauthored book Moving the Museum which chronicles her groundbreaking work at the Art Gallery of Ontario. She developed her position as the inaugural curator of Indigenous Art and co-lead of the Indigenous + Canadian Art Department at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

She has curated survey, group, and retrospective exhibitions: Robert Houle Red is Beautiful (NMAI, Smithsonian, Washington); Rebecca Belmore, Facing the Monumental (2019), (Canada and the U.S) and Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971–1989 among many others. She received her M.A. in Visual Studies from University of Toronto where she has also taught graduate courses. Nanibush has published widely on Indigenous art, politics, history and feminism and sexuality.

Dr Yvette Mutumba is co-founder and director of Contemporary And (C&), a platform reflecting and connecting ideas and discourses on contemporary arts. With its work being deeply rooted in a constantly growing network of creative voices from all over the world, C& publishes two magazines, facilitates educational formats, and develops projects online, offline and inbetween.

Since 2020 Yvette is also curator-at-large at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and lectures at the Institute of Art in Context at the University of Arts, Berlin. She was part of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennale and Guest Professor for Global Discourses at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

2012 to 2016 she was curator at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt a. M. As author and editor, she has published numerous texts and books on contemporary arts.

Cosmin Costinaș (b. 1982, Romania) is the Senior Curator of Exhibition Practices at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, HKW, Berlin (since 2022) and co-Artistic Director of the 24th Biennale of Sydney (2024).

He was the Executive Director/Curator of Para Site, Hong Kong (2011–22); Artistic Director of Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (2022); co-curator of the Romanian Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale (2022); Curatorial Adviser of the Aichi Triennale (2022); Curator of Dakar Biennale 2018 – La Biennale de l’Art africain contemporain-DAK’ART (2018); Guest Curator at the Dhaka Art Summit (2018); Co-curator of the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014); Curator of BAK – basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (2008–11); Co-curator of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennial, Ekaterinburg (2010); and Editor of documenta 12 magazines, Vienna/Kassel (2005–7), among others.

He has edited and contributed his writing to numerous books, magazines, and exhibition catalogues and has taught and lectured at different universities, art academies, and institutions across the world.

Tone Hansen (b. 1970, Kirkenes, Norway/Sápmi) was appointed as director of MUNCH in October 2022. Under her leadership, the museum has further developed its extensive exhibition programme, offering new approaches to the museum's three artistic areas of focus: the work of Edvard Munch, modernism, and contemporary art.

Recent exhibitions include “Alice Neel: Every Person is a New Universe,” “Goya and Munch. Modern Prophecies,” “Corpus Infinitum” with Arjuna Neuman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, and “Trembling Earth.”

From 2011 to 2022 Hansen was the director of the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter. Here, she was responsible for a comprehensive rehabilitation of the building and the establishment of an exhibition program including well-known artists such as Pablo Picasso, Niki de Saint Phalle, Marc Chagall, Yayoi Kusama and Nikolai Astrup, Sami artist Nils Aslak Valkeapä, and the graphic artist and feminist icon Zdenka Rusova, as well as group exhibitions such as “We are Living on a Star” and “Every Moment Counts – AIDS and its feelings”. The diverse and cross-disciplinary programme drew on different perspectives, avant-garde and contemporary approaches.

Hansen is the editor of several anthologies and artist monographs. From 2016 to 2019, she was chair of the Arts Council Norway. She chaired the board of PoMo - Posten Moderne Museum in Trondheim until mid-2023, and has held several other board positions in Scandinavia. Hansen is educated at the Academy of Fine Art in Oslo (1994–1998) and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts as a scholar (equivalent to a PhD) from 2003 to 2009.

Dr Tominga O’Donnell is Senior Curator and Head of Contemporary Art at MUNCH, where they curated the programme Munchmuseet on the Move (2016–2019), adopting a queer curatorial approach and commissioning a range of off-site art projects.

At the new museum on Oslo’s waterfront, O’Donnell is the curator of solo exhibitions with Camille Henrot, Sandra Mujinga, Piya Wanthiang and Admir Batlak; the inaugural MUNCH Triennale – the machine is us together with Stefano Collicelli Cagol; and a series of performance commissions in collaboration with Ingrid Moe, which includes new works by Manuel Pelmuş, Bendik Giske, Camille Norment, and Kiyoshi Yamamoto.

O’Donnell has been Associate Professor in the theory department at the Art Academy, University of Bergen (2018–2022) and a visiting professor at the Art Academy/KHiO in Oslo.