TIMELINE
This section traces over 35 years of curatorial activities, 25 years of which Kunz spent as director of 3 different museums, in Lucerne, New York, and Ascona, for which he was responsible for curating, publishing, and production. Over 200 exhibitions and 150 publications are included in his career, many at Biennales, museums, and other spaces, from the Venice Biennial, the Edinburgh International, the Trigon Biennale-Styrian Autumn in Graz, to major museums around the world.
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1977 - 1989 Director of the Kunstmuseum Lucerne and Curator of International Exhibition
After being appointed as the successor of Jean-Christophe Ammann in the spring of 1977, MK is confronted with an equally challenging and rewarding situation: Amman - who vacates his director's post in Lucerne in favor of heading the Kunsthalle Basel - leaves behind a high-profile institution with a reputation for cutting-edge contemporary art that is not limited to an international program but also includes emerging Swiss artists and special summer exhibitions in the context of the International Festival of Music, which takes place in the same building.
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1980 The Venice Biennale and other international exhibitions
Biennale map 1980
Shortly after taking on his new position at the Lucerne Museum - and not least because of the impact of his Acconci exhibition - the Venice Biennale appoints MK in 1978 as commissioner and curator of the main international exhibit at the Central Pavilion in the Giardini. He is the youngest among his well-established co-curators Harald Szeemann, Michael Compton (from Tate Gallery), and Achille Bonito Oliva who are chosen to collectively organize the main exhibition at the Giardini.
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1982 With his survey exhibition "British Sculpture Now" MK introduces emerging artists
Englische Plastik Heute - Kunstmuseum Luzern - 1982
With his survey exhibition "British Sculpture Now" MK introduces emerging artists like Anish Kapoor, Richard Deacon, Bill Woodrow and Steven Cox even before they are shown in London. As an advocate of underrepresented female artists, MK shows Maria Lassnig, Alice Aycock, Astrid Klein, Christa Näher, and Isolde Wawrin throughout the 1980s.There was also a project of participation in a Louise Bourgeois exhibition with Weiermeier in Frankfurt, which was not realized by his successor.
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1989 Departure from Lucerne Museum and move to New York
In the winter of 1989 MK leaves the Lucerne Museum and moves to New York where he plans to open a European-style Kunsthalle, a type of exhibition space that he finds lacking in the city's vital art scene. He had to build up the institution with help of European Art Philantropists from scratch. The building which was selected was still in use as a well known, but run down film studio near Cooper Union, the “Mother’s Film stages”, set up an non-for-profit organisation “The New York Kunsthalle”.
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1993 - 1994 Groundbreaking exhibitions at New York Kunsthalle
Sarajevo Witnesses of Existence - Poster
In its first two years, the New York Kunsthalle mostly presents exhibitions by emerging artists who in many cases are inspired by the ruin itself or by the traces and left overs from the film studio. Quite a few of them eventually appear in biennials and established New York institutions.
Among those are Nancy Rubins, Dan Peterman, Kirsten Mosher and Sonia Labouriou, who are represented in the 1993 exhibit Enclosure - it goes up while construction work on the building is still in progress, and the equipment is used for some of the large scale installations.
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1994 - 1995: Intensive renovations, including a new roof, take place
Peep Show - The New York Kunsthalle
Intensive renovations, including a new roof, take place. During that period, the two storefronts of the building, which are accessible from East Fifths Street, are used as exhibition spaces: a small jury of well-known New York art critics, artists, and curators selects 36 participants to show their work for an extended amount of time.
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1997 Leon Golub
Leon Golub - New York 1987 - Card (front)
Leon Golub, whose powerful tableaux of human cruelty and suffering MK was the first to present in a museum on the European continent in 1987 in Lucerne and Hamburg newer paintings of the ‘70and ‘80. In New York Golub showed his earlier exhibits, works from his intense series Shields and Gigantomachy of the late ‘60 and ‘70.
Exact dates in 1997 But the critical success of this and previous shows alone cannot carry the Kunsthalle, and MK is forced to announce the closing of his non-profit in the near future.
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2000 - 2003 Exhibitions and events at the former Kunsthalle, now Beethoven Hall
Qiu Shia Hua - Artwork
MK and Linda Salerno move into their loft on the top floor of the former Kunsthalle. LS transfers the content of her Soho studio of 30 years to the East Village and shows her paintings in the grand project room with its fifteen-meter ceiling adjacent to the couple's living quarters.
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2005 - 2007: Director of the Ascona Museum of Modern Art
Photo Suisse poster (front)
MK becomes director of the Ascona Museum of Modern Art. Part of his mission requires the supervision of the creation of a new museum structure within a planned music and art Center - the project is never realized.
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2007 - 2009 Founding of K10-Kunzarchive
K10-Kunzarchive
MK oversees the scholarly organization of his library of about 20,000 art books, catalogues and bibliophile items, which have traveled back to Switzerland from New York. He lays the groundwork for the eventual opening of K10-Kunzarchive as a semi-public research and exhibition space. Parallel to these efforts MK also converts a former Coop supermarket that LS has discovered in Bedano - a northern part of Lugano - into a studio and exhibition space for her.
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