Karen Archey

Karen Archey is Head of the Curatorial Department of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf. From 2017 until 2025, Archey was Curator of Contemporary Art at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. There, she cared for the contemporary art and time-based media collections, and organized major exhibitions of artists Hito Steyerl, Rineke Dijkstra, Metahaven, Pamela Rosenkranz and Marina Abramović. For the Stedelijk, Archey commissioned performance works by Nora Turato, Jennifer Tee, Ann Hirsch, Alicia Frankovich, and CFGNY, among other artists.

Archey is a leading voice worldwide on the subjects of modern and contemporary art and museum practice. A frequent public speaker, she has recently given lectures at MMCA, Seoul, South Korea; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Swiss Institute, New York, and MUDAM, Luxembourg, among other institutions. Formerly based in Berlin and New York, Archey earlier worked as an independent curator, editor, and art critic, writing for publications such as Artforum and frieze. In 2014, she organized with Robin Peckham the landmark exhibition “Art Post-Internet” at Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing. In 2015, Archey was awarded an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for short-form writing. Her essay-length book After Institutions (Floating Opera Press, 2022) examines museums as a rapidly changing public space subject to radical political and economic shifts.