Francesco Bonami Takes Over as Artistic Director of Moscow's GES-2

By Daniel Okafor

Francesco Bonami, the Italian-born curator who ran the 2003 Venice Biennale's main exhibition, has been named artistic director of the GES-2 House of Culture, the 440,000-square-foot Moscow art space that sits across a river from the Kremlin. The V-A-C Foundation, which operates the venue, announced the appointment.

The house has a short, loud history. GES-2 opened in 2021, months before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Its founder is the V-A-C Foundation, established by Leonid Mikhelson, the Russian-Israeli billionaire who owns one of Russia's largest private natural gas companies and who became one of the first individuals sanctioned by the UK after the war began. Mikhelson appeared on the ARTnews Top 200 Collectors list from 2013 to 2021.

Who is Bonami replacing?

Alisa Prudnikova, founder of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, steps aside for Bonami. She will stay on in a curatorial role. Prudnikova herself took the job in turbulent circumstances: she succeeded Teresa Iarocci Mavica, the museum's cofounder, who resigned at the end of 2021 for reasons that were never fully explained.

At the time, some speculated Mikhelson disliked a monumental Urs Fischer sculpture outside the museum. Others noted Mavica had personally toured Vladimir Putin through the complex. The official line was that the V-A-C's Venice space needed her attention before the 2022 Biennale.

The building has hosted other exits. Shortly after the invasion, Ragnar Kjartansson canceled performances of a new work at GES-2, saying: "It is not possible to have this work continue as this horror begins."

What has Bonami done before?

Plenty, and on both sides of the Atlantic:

• The Venice Biennale's "Aperto" section for emerging artists, 1993
• The Biennale's entire main exhibition, 2003
• Senior posts at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
• Editions of Manifesta (the roving European biennial), the Whitney Biennial, and the SITE Santa Fe International
• A column, "Ask a Curator," for ARTnews

He knows the client, too. Bonami has worked for the V-A-C Foundation before, organizing 2024's "Square and Space: From Malevich to GES-2" with Zelfira Tregulova, director of the Tretyakov Gallery. The appointment is less a leap than a formalization.

What about the ethics question?

Bonami has answered it, at length. Asked in 2024 whether Western curators should avoid Russia's art scene, he told ARTnews: "Sorry, but the ethics of curating is a bullshit concept that I don't indulge in. I could write a list of my colleagues who are collaborating with, to the say the least, ethically questionable people—but this is not the point … Sanctions are economic, not cultural. To sanction culture is a white crime that kills people's souls."

Not much wiggle room there. He holds US citizenship as well as Italian, and he is betting that cultural continuity matters more than quarantine.

On his new role, Bonami said in a statement: "In my understanding, the role of Artistic Director is to catalyse artistic energy. Our common goal is to search for the best projects for GES-2. My experience should help with this."

How a Western-facing curator programs a Kremlin-adjacent museum for a sanctioned gas magnate, three years into a war, is now the most closely watched programming question in Moscow.