Countess Adelina von Fürstenberg-Herdringen (née Cüberyan) is a Swiss curator and one of the field's pioneers in broadening contemporary art. Von Fürstenberg was one of the first curators to show an interest in non-European artists, thus opening the way for a multicultural approach in art. She also took a more global and flexible approach to contemporary art exhibitions, in bringing art into spaces such as monasteries, madrasas, large public buildings, squares, islands, and parks. Her objective is to give a larger context for visual art in making it a more vigorous part of our lives, in creating a more vivid dialogue for it with other arts, and relating it more to worldwide social issues.
Biography
A Swiss citizen of Armenian origin — granddaughter of the Armenian architect Dikran Kalfa Cüberyan — she was born in Istanbul. She married when she was still at university, to the photographer Count Franz Egon von Fürstenberg-Herdringen (b. 1939), son of Gloria Guinness (1913-1980) and Count Franz-Egon von Fürstenberg-Herdringen (1896-1975).
During her studies of political science at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, Adelina von Fürstenberg founded in 1974 the Centre d'Art Contemporain Genève, which she directed until 1989, presenting several solo shows of the pioneers of pop art, Fluxus, conceptual art, and minimal art, such as Christian Boltanski, Dan Graham, Vito Acconci, Joseph Kosuth, Daniel Buren, Sol LeWitt, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, and Lawrence Weiner. In the same period she organized performances with John Cage, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Joan Jonas, Alvin Lucier, Lucinda Childs, Trisha Brown, Marina Abramović, Charlemagne Palestine, Terry Riley, and Robert Wilson, as well as many group exhibitions, among them the well known open-air exhibition Promenades (1985), on the Lake Leman shores at Parc Lullin, Genthod with sculptures, and site-specific art installations with the Arte Povera artists.
During her stay in Geneva, she opened the door of many international organisations to contemporary culture. In 1989, she organized large exhibitions in the Geneva headquarters of international organisations such as the ILO (International Labour Organization), where she presented The Line of Fire, a model by the American architect Daniel Libeskind, scale 1/1, that would later become the Jewish Museum Berlin.
From 1989 to 1994, she directed Le Magasin, Centre d’Art Contemporain of Grenoble, France, where she curated large solo exhibitions of major artists, such as Gino De Dominicis and Alighiero Boetti, as well as symposia and lectures on architecture, science and philosophy. For five years she has directed the Ecole du Magasin (School of Curators). In 1993, for the 45th Venice Biennale she co-curated the Italian Pavilion and the Russian Pavilion (Ilya Kabakov). She also curated the exhibition Trésors du Voyage on the island of San Lazzaro. On this occasion, the international Jury of the Biennale awarded her a prize for her direction of Le Magasin and her work at the School of Curators.
In 1995, on the occasion of the United Nations' 50th anniversary, she was invited to conceive and curate the exhibition Dialogues of Peace, an international exhibition presented at the UN Headquarters in Geneva. Chen Zhen, Tadashi Kawamata, and Alfredo Jaar were some of the 60 artists from various continents who contributed to the exhibition.
In 1996, she founded ART for The World, a non-governmental organization (NGO) associate to the UN Department of Public Information for the diffusion and promotion of the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights through the organization of exhibitions and events around the world.
Adelina von Fürstenberg has curated with ART for The World, at the occasion of the Venice Biennale at the Armenian Monastery of San Lazzaro, solo shows of Robert Rauschenberg (1997), Jannis Kounellis (2003) and Joseph Kosuth (2007) and in Palazzo Zenobio the Children Museum of the architect Philip Johnson. Since 2005, with ART for The World Europa, in Milan, she has worked with Hangar Bicocca, in creating a series of shows, among them the world avant-première Balkan Epic by Marina Abramović (2006).
Since 1998, she has worked in partnership with the Regional Direction of SESC Sao Paulo, Brazil, in curating large exhibitions, among them The Overexcited Body. Art and Sport in Contemporary Art, Voom Portraits by Robert Wilson (2008), and, in 2010, Urban Manners 2 on Indian contemporary art, for the first time in South America.