Mario Codognato

Mario Codognato has been, since its foundation in 2005, the Chief Curator of MADRE, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Naples, where he curated, among others, retrospectives of Jannis Kounellis (2006), Rachel Whiteread (2007), Thomas Struth (2008), and Franz West (2010).

He previously worked on the contemporary art project at the Archaeological Museum in Naples, curating exhibitions by Francesco Clemente (2002), Jeff Koons (2003), Anish Kapoor (2003), Richard Serra (2004), Anselm Kiefer (2004), and the first-ever museum retrospective of Damien Hirst (2004).

Since 1999, he has curated site-specific public projects for Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples, as well as exhibitions and catalogue essays on the work of Alighiero Boetti (1992 and 1999), Richard Long (1994 and 1997), Gilbert & George (1998), Jan Fabre (1999), Brice Marden (2001), Wolfgang Laib (2005), Candida Höfer (2013), Douglas Gordon (2017), and Ed Ruscha (2019). He has also curated several thematic exhibitions, including “Barock” at MADRE (2009) and “Fragile?” at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice (2013).

From 2014 to 2016, he served as Chief Curator at the 21er Haus of the Belvedere in Vienna, curating, among others, retrospectives of Olafur Eliasson, Tomás Saraceno, and Sterling Ruby, as well as the exhibition “Sleepless”, exploring the history and role of the bed in art. His more recent projects include “Anish Kapoor” at MACRO in Rome (2017), “Damien Hirst” at Houghton Hall in Norfolk (2018) and at Galleria Borghese in Rome (2021), and “Georg Baselitz” at the Museum Palazzo Grimani in Venice (2021).

Since 2016, he has been Director of the Anish Kapoor Foundation, and since 2022, of the Berggruen Arts & Culture Foundation.