"All fields are closer together at this point than they have ever been before and if one is interested in a number of fields, as I am, it is really easy to move around in the conversations and connect experiences and knowledge."
Before becoming a curator, Jens Hoffmann trained as a theater director and studied stage directing, dramaturgy and cultural sociology at the Ernst Busch School for Performing Arts in Berlin and the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, Amsterdam. He served as deputy director for exhibitions and public programs at the Jewish Museum in New York City and, in 2012, assumed a second role as a senior adjunct curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, where he has curated major exhibitions. Previously, Hoffmann directed the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. He has organized a number of high-profile international exhibitions, including the 2011 Istanbul Biennial with Adriano Pedrosa; the 2007 Lyon Biennial; and, as a co-curator, the inaugural Berlin Biennial in 1998. He also staged the infamous Sixth Caribbean Biennial with Maurizio Cattelan, a fictional biennial that saw a number of artists vacation in a resort on the island of St. Kitts in 1999. Hoffman has been a guest at the Center, visiting in 2011 for a lecture with local practitioners, and has contributed to Center publications Pigeons on the Grass: Contemporary Curators Talk About the Field and In Terms of Performance.
