Malene Vest Hansen

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Primary fields of research

Malene Vest Hansen is an art historian and art critic specialized in modern and contemporary art working with the politics and historiography of art, identities, curating, exhibitions, and art museums.

Vest Hansen holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Copenhagen with the dissertation Sophie Calle: Identitetsbilleder og social arkæologi (2001). She was co-founder and co-editor of Periskop: forum for kunsthistorisk debat (1992-2012), Sum – magazine for contemporary art (2007-2009) and co-editor of the books Kuratering af Samtidskunst (Museet for Samtidskunst 2011), Curatorial Challenges: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Contemporary Curating (Routledge 2019), and Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum (Routledge 2023). Her work on contemporary art, in particular conceptual and feminist art, art in public space, curating, biennialization, museum and exhibitions histories have been published in journals such as Art Journal, Kunstbulletin, Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, Nordisk Museologi, Etudes Germaniques, and anthologies including Border Poetics De-limited (2007), Plats, poetik och politik (2010) Genuspedagogiske Gärninger (2012), Performing Archives/Archives of Performance (2013), Ny Kulturteori (2019), and Museums at the Post-Digital Turn (2019).

Vest Hansen is currently Principle Investigator of the research project Curating the Contemporary: An Exhibition History of the Museum of Modern Art as a New Bildung Institution (2019-2023, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark). The project follows up on her work as PI of the Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial (2016-2019, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark). The network gathered international, primarily Nordic, researchers and curators from both academia and museums and exhibitionary institutions.

These projects engage in different ways with exhibitions as a primary site of cultural exchange, as highly visible showcases, producers of knowledge, and historically embedded events, establishing meanings of art and cultural identity. The aim is to explore the history of temporary exhibitions, how they continue to increase in cultural significance and how the changing politics of curating transform the museum as a Bildung institution. Among the outputs from the projects are the international research conference Curatorial Challenges (2016), and the anthologies Curatorial Challenges: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Contemporary Curating (2019) and Curating the Contemporary in the Art Museum (2023), both books published in the series Routledge Research in Art Museums and Exhibitions.

Vest Hansen worked as an art critic for Dagbladet Politiken (1990-1999) and has contributed to journals and magazines such as Art Journal, Kunstkritikk.no, Webmagasinet Forum, Øjeblikket, Septynios menos dienos, Atlas, and Kunstbulletin.

Vest Hansen is Associate Professor of Art History at University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and a member of the Danish Arts Council.

Current research

I investigate changing concepts of art, curating of exhibitions and the role of museums. Presently, I am PI and conduct the art history research project: Curating the contemporary: An Exhibiting History of the Museum of Modern Art as a new Bildung institution (Funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research FKK1-project 2019-2023). The project is following up on my work as PI of the interdisciplinary Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial,( funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research 2015-2017), the network gathered international, primarily Nordic, researchers and curators from both academia and museums and exhibitionary institutions, one important output of this is the anthology Curatorial Challenges: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Contemporary Curating (Routledge 2019).

Teaching

I teach Contemporary art (on a regular basis (Art History BA, modul 1) and also teach and advise in the following areas:

• curating and museum studies
• exhibition history
• contemporary art and modern art and theories
• feminist art history and theori
• art in public space
• conceptual art
• history painting (Nicolas Poussin)