Maria Müller-Schareck is curator of the Kunstsammlung NRW in Düsseldorf. She studied Art History, Archaeology and Romance Studies in Cologne and Bonn. She presented her dissertation “Aspects of Dada Reception in the 1950s” in 1986. There followed a traineeship at the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart in 1987/88. She has worked on numerous modern art exhibitions since 1988. Her most recent exhibition projects are: Agnes Martin (in co-operation with Tate Modern, 2015/16); Anni Albers (in co-operation with Tate Modern, 2018) and, with Kathrin Beßen, Doris Krystof, Isabelle Malz and others, museum global. Mikrogeschichten einer ex-zentrischen Moderne (2018). In addition she has written numerous articles on modern and contemporary art.

Following her studies in Painting and Graphic Design at the University of Wuppertal, Eller-Rüter earned her doctorate in 1989 on “Kandinsky: Composition for the Stage and Poetry as Realization of his Conception of Synaesthesia”. She has been Professor of Painting and Art in the Social Context at the Alanus University of Arts and Social Social Sciences in Alfter/Bonn since 2006. In 2008 she founded the Institut für Kunst im gesellschaftlichen Kontext, with intercultural, participatory, interdisciplinary projects in Romania, Palestine, South Africa, Nicaragua and many other countries. Besides numerous visiting professorships, including in Poland, South Africa, Palestine and China, she works as a freelance artist.

Following studies in Art History, Classical Archaeology, Near Eastern Archaeology and Philosophy, Rebbelmund earned her doctorate in 1998 on “Appropriation Art – The Copy as Art Form in the 20th Century”. She has worked on a freelance consultant basis for the Museumsdienst Köln since 1999. She has been employed at the Museum of Applied Art Cologne since 2008, where she has been curator for Design and Fine Art, Graphic Design and Poster since 2014. To mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus in Weimar, in 2019, with the exhibition “2 von 14. Zwei Kölnerinnen am Bauhaus”, she shed light on the work of Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein and her cousin Marianne Ahlfeld-Heymann. She is in charge of restructuring the Design department, which was reopened in August 2019 following closure due to renovation works.

Following studies in Art History and German Studies at Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg and the University of Cologne, Schmidt was employed as gallery assistant at Galerie Rolf Ricke in Cologne from 1997, prior to founding the Galerie Schmidt Maczollek together with Iris Maczollek in Cologne in 2005. Anke Schmidt has continued to run the gallery alone under her own name since 2014. The gallery’s programme encompasses contemporary positions with the focus on abstract painting and sculpture. Alongside partnerships with a generation of internationally established artists, the gallery likewise represents emerging young positions.

Astrid Bardenheuer studied art (painting and film) and history of art. Since 2014, she is head of the “artotheque Cologne – Space of Young Art”. There she is in charge of the art collection including purchases and presents exhibitions in the “Space of Young Art”.

Maurice Funken studied history of art at RWTH Aachen University and the University of York. Since 2015 Funken has been working at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, which he took over as director at the beginning of 2018. The NAK not only assumes a core function for the local art scene, but also finds international recognition as an innovative platform for contemporary art and its discourses. As artistic director, he has expanded the exhibition program of the Kunstverein to include such pop-cultural outstanding positions as Fischerspoooner and most recently Lars Eidinger.