Gianni Jetzer is a prolific curator specializing in contemporary art. He has more than two decades of experience as director and curator of museum exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and North America. After having gained a reputation curating exhibitions at the Migros Museum in Zurich, he became Kunsthalle St. Gallen’s youngest Director in 2001. During his five-year tenure, he raised the international profile of this already well-respected institution with cutting-edge shows. In 2006, he left his native Switzerland to become Director of Swiss Institute in New York, where he spurred significant growth in both outreach and reputation, eventually leading to the relaunch of the popular non-profit institution in a storefront space in the heart of SoHo. While Jetzer was at the helm of the organization, renowned art critic Jerry Saltz wrote: “the Swiss Institute proves that it is one of the best spaces in town.”
Since 2013, Gianni Jetzer has worked as an independent curator and, from 2014 on, as Curator-at-Large at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. Thus far, he has curated three thematic exhibitions there ranging from the substitution of the human body in digital art to the impact of commodity culture in the New York art scene of the 1980s.
From November 1 2022 on, Jetzer directs Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, one of the oldest art museums in Switzerland with an extensive collection in three distinct venues. In February 2023 Jetzer opened highly successful solo shows by American, Paris-based artist Sheila Hicks as well as by Tschabalala Self, a painter raised in Harlem, NY.
PDF files for download:
Portrait FT Financial Times
Portrait Art in America
Portrait in the magazine in the NZZ am Sonntag (in German)
CV
On Cinema and Painting: Peter Doig, Charline von Heyl, Rita Ackermann, moderated by Gianni Jetzer
Swiss Institute, New York
22 January 2011
Internationally renowned painters Peter Doig, Charline von Heyl, and Rita Ackermann discuss the use of allegory as applied to painting. A critically rich topic, they examined the overlap between cinema and painting–the opposing desires to screen and to subvert.