Francesco Bonami Named Artistic Director of Moscow's GES-2 House of Culture

Key facts

• Francesco Bonami, an Italian curator with US citizenship, has been appointed artistic director of GES-2 House of Culture in Moscow.
• GES-2 opened in 2021 inside an early-20th-century power plant opposite the Kremlin, founded by Leonid Mikhelson's V-A-C Foundation.
• The appointment was announced this week amid deteriorating official relations between Russia and Europe over the invasion of Ukraine.
• Teresa Iarocci Mavica stepped down as head of GES-2 a month after it opened; Alisa Prudnikova has overseen programming since 2022 and will stay until December.
• Bonami previously served as artistic director of the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003, co-curator of Manifesta 3 (2000) and the Whitney Biennial (2010), and senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago for nearly a decade.
• In 2024, Bonami curated Maurizio Cattelan's first solo gallery exhibition in 20 years at Gagosian in New York, and co-curated Square and Space: From Malevich to GES-2 with Zelfira Tregulova.
• The European Union pulled €2m Venice Biennale funding over Russia's participation earlier this year, while Italy has been more open, with Biennale president Pietrangelo Buttafuoco defending Russia's return.
• Museum exchanges between Russia and EU countries and the UK were suspended after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022; neither Mikhelson nor his daughter Victoria, who received ownership of GES-2 in 2023, have been personally sanctioned.