Lorenzo Balbi
Lorenzo Balbi was born in Rivoli (Turin) in 1982, lives and works in Bologna. An art critic and curator, since 2017 he has been Director of MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna and Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Area of the Bologna Civic Museums Sector, to which, in addition to MAMbo, Villa delle Rose, Museo Morandi, Casa Morandi, Museo per la Memoria di Ustica and Sandra Natali Artist Residence belong. Since 2022 he has been president of AMACI – Association of Italian Contemporary Art Museums. From 2006 to 2017 at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, he taught Curatorial Methodology at CAMPO, a course for curators, was in charge of the organization and development of exhibition projects in the institution’s spaces in Turin and Guarene d’Alba, as well as curating numerous exhibitions of the Sandretto Re Re Rebaudengo Collection abroad and several editions of the Residency Project for Young Foreign Curators. Since 2018, he has been the artistic director of ART CITY Bologna, an annual review of exhibition events in the city promoted on the occasion of Arte Fiera, and in 2022 he conceived the Nuovo Forno del Pane interdisciplinary production center that transforms the spaces and function of the museum from an exhibition space to a space of production and creative community. A lecturer in Art Systems at the DAMS of the University of Bologna and Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at the Bologna Business School, he regularly lectures at the Accademia dei Belle Arti in Bologna, IED in Florence and Turin and other institutions of higher learning. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, the Board of Directors of the Lucio Saffaro Foundation, the advisory board of the Fondazione Scuola Beni e Attività Culturali and the Luiss Business School, he is president of the Public Art Commission of the Municipality of Bologna and a full member of the Accademia Clementina since 2024. Over the years he has written and collaborated with Flash Art, ATP Diary, Artribune, Exibart, Mousse Magazine, Arte e Critica, Il Giornale dell’Arte, and curated exhibitions and monographic projects of artists such as: Yuri Ancarani, Tino Sehgal, Gregor Schneider, Mika Rottenberg, Julian Charriére, Robert Kusmirowski, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ludovica Carbotta, Romeo Castellucci, Italo Zuffi, Cesare Pietroiusti, Aldo Giannotti, Jan Groover, Cécile B. Evans, Lynda Benglis, Guido Guidi, Antoni Muntadas, Nino Migliori, Emilio Isgrò, Vadim Zakharov and Virgilio Sieni. He has just curated the 60th edition of the October Salon/Belgrade Biennale.
