Udo Kittelmann (Düsseldorf, Germany, 1958) is the former director of the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (2008-2020), which includes the Alte Nationalgalerie, the Neue Nationalgalerie, the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Museum Berggruen, among others. Director of the Kölnischer Kunstverein from 1994 to 2001, Kittelmann went on to direct the Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt from 2002 to 2008. In 2001 he was commissioner of the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and curated Gregor Schneider’s solo exhibition “Totes Haus u r,” which won the Golden Lion for the Best National Participation. In 2013 Kittelmann curated the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, where he presented Vadim Zakharov’s “Danaë”. Kittelmann has investigated curatorial practices and institutions’ relationships with art over the course of his long career as a curator and museum director. He focuses on the processes of art, and therefore its implicit laws and potential display configurations. He has based his curatorial approach on close collaboration with artists, setting up their works, moving beyond the aesthetic dimension and focusing on the artwork’s specific socio-political context. In 2017 he curated the exhibition “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.”, result of a dialogue with Thomas Demand, Alexander Kluge and Anna Viebrock, on view at Fondazione Prada in Venice. His past projects further include Anne Imhof’s opera “Angst II”, as well as the exhibitions “George Condo – Confrontation” and Adrian Piper’s project “The Probable Trust Registry.” He curated Liu Ye’s solo show “Storytelling” on view at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai and at Fondazione Prada in Milan in 2018 and 2020, respectively. In 2020 he also conceived the exhibition project “K”, featuring works by Martin Kippenberger, Orson Welles and Tangerine Dream inspired by three novels by Franz Kafka, for the Milan venue of Fondazione Prada.