Adam Szymczyk, a Polish art critic and curator, has been appointed director of the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel!
For the past ten years, the director of the Swiss Architecture Museum has been Andreas Ruby. With Ruby planning to leave the post at the end of 2025, a competition for a new director of the institution was announced in May. The committee evaluating the applications of male and female candidates included architects associated with S AM: Meinrad Morger, Emanuel Christ, Ludovica Molo and Céline Guibat, as well as exhibition curators from ETH Zürich: Niels Olsen and Fredi Fischli. The jury was chaired by Christine Binswanger, an architect at Herzog & de Meuron.
unanimous choice
Fifty-eight candidates applied for the position, and eight of them were invited to the interview stage. Adam Szymczyk was selected unanimously by the committee.
Adam Szymczyk was born in 1970. He graduated from art history at the University of Warsaw. Already during his studies he was associated with the Foksal Gallery, and in 1997, together with Wieslaw Borowski, Joanna Mytkowska and Andrzej Przywara, he established the Foksal Gallery Foundation in Warsaw. He completed the curatorial program of the De Appel art center in Amsterdam.
Taking the helm of S AM will not be his first experience in Basel - from 2003 to 2014 he was curator of Kunsthalle Basel, where he organized more than 80 exhibitions. In 2008 he was co-curator (with Elena Filipovic) of the 5th Berlin Biennale, and in 2017 he was director of the 14th Documenta festival in Kassel and Athens. He also taught seminars at the Institute of History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich. He has been an independent curator for the past eight years. He will assume the position of director of S AM in 2026.
architecture in a broad context
After more than 25 years of curating contemporary art exhibitions, I am eager to apply my knowledge and experience in a different context. In my work as a curator, author and lecturer, I have often dealt with architecture and architects, increasingly aware of the political dimension of the profession and the discourse that shapes architecture in a broader social, economic and cultural context,
- says Szymczyk.
What influenced the jury's choice?
Adam Szymczyk's poetic and theory-based reflection on architecture fully convinced the jury. He sees the works and projects of architects and artists as a response to the pressing problems of our time, such as the need for responsible use of resources, as well as the social importance of the profession and its representatives. In Szymczyk's works, a critical analysis of history serves as an inspiration for the present and helps define a vision for the future. In addition to the sensory qualities of his exhibitions, Szymczyk's curatorial practice is characterized by precision of observation and clarity of communication with the audience, and similar qualities were also evident in his presentation to the committee. We are confident that Adam Szymczyk, working with the S AM team, will strengthen our network and take our audience to inspiring and surprising places
- we read in the justification for the decision.
Congratulations!
