Kate Fowle has joined Hauser & Wirth as curatorial senior director, according to Artnews. She will be based in New York. The British-born Fowle last June sent ripples through the art world with the announcement that she was departing as director of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, New York; she had spent barely three years in the role, in which she succeeded longtime director Klaus Biesenbach, who left to helm the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (he soon returned to his native Germany to lead Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie). Fowle offered no reason for her resignation at the time; by the time of her leaving, she had already established a strong reputation at PS1 for engaging the local community in shows that grappled with a wide range of social issues, even as she was almost immediately forced to navigate the difficulties brought on by the pandemic.
At Hauser & Wirth, Fowle will work closely with artists and artist estates to present exhibitions both at the gallery and outside it. As well, she will serve as a writer and editor for the gallery’s book imprint, Hauser & Wirth Publishers, and its magazine, Ursula.
“We are delighted to have Kate join Hauser & Wirth in a new role that supports a central priority of our gallery: close, constant, consistent collaboration with our artists to further develop their careers through deeper relationships with museums and other cultural institutions in the US and internationally,” said Hauser & Wirth president Marc Payot. “With her breadth of knowledge and extensive curatorial experience, Kate is poised to support our ongoing work, to help further connect our artists and our artist teams with the wider world.”
Before arriving to MoMA PS1 in 2019, Fowle spent six years as the chief curator of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow, helping oversee the 2015 opening of its Rem Koolhaas–designed building and inaugurating the Garage Triennial two years later. Prior to her work with Garage, she was executive director of the New York–based nonprofit Independent Curators International.