Udo Kittelmann

Udo Kittelmann, born 1958 in Düsseldorf, is a German curator and former museum director and one of the most influential figures in contemporary exhibition-making. He directed the Kölnischer Kunstverein from 1994 to 2001 and the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt from 2002 to 2008. From 2008 to 2020, he served as Director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, overseeing its major institutions including the Alte Nationalgalerie, Neue Nationalgalerie and Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart among others. During his tenure he also initiated the renovation of Mies van der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie, by the British architect David Chipperfield, and the upcoming “Berlin Modern” designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Known for an artist-centered and interdisciplinary approach to exhibition-making, Kittelmann has curated numerous major international projects. In 2001, he curated Gregor Schneider’s Totes Haus for the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, which was awarded the Golden Lion for Best National Participation; in 2013 he curated Vadim Zakharov’s Danaë for the Russian Pavilion.

Since then he also staged several exhibitions for Fondazione Prada in Milan, Venice and Shanghai, among them The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied (Biennale di Venezia, 2017) with Thomas Demand, Alexander Kluge and Anna Viebrock, and more recently, in collaboration with Taryn Simon Human Brains: It Begins with an Idea (Biennale di Venezia, 2022), an exhibition in the field of neuroscience. Both of these projects redefined the philosophy of an interdisciplinary exhibition. His numerous projects also include the exhibition El Greco/Tino Sehgal (2023) at the Centro Botín in Santander, Spain. Most recently he curated What a Wonderful World - An Audiovisual Poem for the Julia Stoschek Foundation at the Variety Art Theater in Los Angeles. In summer 2026 he joined the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin and its team.