Victoria Noorthoorn
Director, Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires 

Victoria Noorthoorn (*1971, Buenos Aires) is the director of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires since 2013. She is an internationally renowned curator who has curated significant biennials (Pontevedra 2006, Mercosul 2009, Lyon 2011) and has become one of the defining voices in Latin American museum practices.

Museo Moderno holds the largest public collection of modern and contemporary Argentinian art and design of +8000 works, a specialized library and archives, all of which are studied to serve a most dynamic program of exhibitions. During Noorthoorn’s tenure, Museo Moderno has fundamentally expanded and transformed: with an increased budget, a team of now 160 staff members, and doubled exhibition spaces, the museum has realized over one hundred and thirty exhibitions and published seventy bilingual publications. Furthermore, the team has launched sophisticated educational and mediation programs attended annually by 10,000 teachers.

She understands the museum as a space that makes diverse voices visible, where open dialogues are possible. A particular achievement is the presentation of the rich collection of predominantly Argentine modern history within a contemporary context, accompanied by numerous individually curated and thematically presented exhibitions that compose each yearly program of exhibitions. In this way, she has presented radical contemporary artists such as Marta Minujín, Liliana Maresca and Tomás Saraceno from Argentina, Zanele Muholi and Tracey Rose from South Africa, as well as experimental positions such as Nicanor Aráoz, Diego Bianchi, Eduardo Basualdo and Celina Eceiza, to name a few.

In this conversation, Noorthoorn will delve into the experience around Celina Eceiza’s exhibition Ofrenda which was first shown at Museo Moderno in 2024 after an extended research and production period. It is now being presented in a modified form in cooperation with the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark. She also has a long exhibition history with Diego Bianchi. She presented Bianchi’s work at the 11eme Biennale de Lyon (2011) and in several exhibitions at Museo Moderno during her tenure. In 2017, the Museum presented his solo show El presente está encantador (2017) curated by Javier Villa, in which Bianchi’s critical and often provocative works were not presented in isolation as a solo show, but actually devoured the museum’s collection, with significant historical works becoming active participants of his show. Additionally, in 2019 Bianchi became the winner of the Premio Azcuy (2019), where Noorthoorn served on the jury.

For Diego Bianchi and Celina Eceiza, Noorthoorn opened institutional and curatorial frameworks that deepened their practice. Celina Eceiza, found a platform at the Moderno for her large-scale installations, whose ​“soft museum” under Noorthoorn’s direction was not treated as a marginal phenomenon but as a central part of a pluralistic museum policy. Both Bianchi’s and Eceiza’s projects are indirectly linked to the reconstruction of Marta Minujín and Rubén Santantonín’s seminal environment La Menesunda(1965), which Museo Moderno reconstructed and presented first in Buenos Aires in 2015 that still carries a lasting impact in the audience and artistic community and after being presented at the New Museum, New York is now on its European Tour in partnership with Tate Liverpool, visiting the latter and Copenhagen Contemporary, Reina Sofía, and Kanal Pompidou till 2028. Both artists benefit from the Museum’s strategy of not only researching and producing big commissions but also anchoring art in exchange with the archive, the collection, and strong mediation. Noorthoorn does not shy away from elaborate and sometimes controversial realizations. In doing so, she turns the museum into a lively, open resonance space for contemporary and diverse voices.

As an expert not only on Bianchi’s and Eceiza’s practice but also on Argentine art history and contemporary art, Victoria Noorthoorn will discuss the two exhibitions at the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark together with Sandro Droschl.