Sabine Breitwieser


Sabine Breitwieser is an Austrian curator, art manager and publicist.

Life

After studying law in Linz, Breitwieser obtained her doctorate in law at the University of Vienna. She was initially coordinator and curator in 1988 and from 1991 to 2007 the first artistic director on the board of the Generali Foundation. In developing the initial plans for a collection of Austrian sculpture, she expanded the Generali Foundation's art collection with a focus on conceptual and critical art. This collection, as well as the exhibitions it has shown, have met with international acclaim.
In 2003 and 2004 she was one of the curators of the International Liverpool Biennial and from 2003 to 2008 she was a member of the University Council of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. In 2007, Breitwieser became Secretary and Treasurer of CIMAM.
She was appointed the chief curator of media and performance art at MoMA in Manhattan in May 2010, holding the role until 2013. In the same year she completed the second part of her two-year project Utopia and Monument for the Styrian Autumn, which she had begun the previous year. From 2013 to 2018, she was the director of the Museum of Modern Salzburg. In 2014, as part of her work as director, she agreed to a partnership with Generali and the relocation of the collection she had built up from Vienna to MdMS. Breitwieser also works as a freelance curator, lecturer and author on contemporary art.
She co-organized a show on German sculptor Isa Genzken in 2013, the first "comprehensive Genzken exhibition in an American museum." In 2015, she organized "Carole Schneemann: Kinetic Painting" for the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, which traveled to MoMA PS1 in 2017 and 2018. In 2019 and 2020, she curated a show at the Muzeum Susch about Carolee Schneeman.

Awards

MdMS - [Museum der Moderne Salzburg]