Join the Conversation is an international networking initiative that invites emerging and senior art professionals, curators, and critics to experience and engage with the Viennese art scene in-depth. It is organized by viennacontemporary and takes place with the kind support of the Vienna Business Agency.

The program offers numerous visits to galleries, off-spaces, museums, and evening events, as well as a Talk at viennacontemporary, moderated this year by Attilia Fattori Franchini, Co-Founder and artistic director of Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Director of curatedby, Independent Curator & Writer.

Meet the six impressive art professionals who will come to Vienna in September to Join The Conversation.

 

Valentino Catricalà | Saudi Arabia

Valentino Catricalà (Ph.D) is currently working in Saudi Arabia setting up a big new project for Saudi Arabia Ministry of Culture. Valentino is also artistic director of MODAL Gallery at SODA-School of Digital Art in Manchester and lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is co-curator of the D’ORO D’ART Project, in collaboration with Marian Goodman Gallery. Valentino is also a member of the Advisory Board of the ZKM-Zentrum Fur Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe and of the ESEA contemporary in Manchester.

Valentino has curated many exhibitions in important museum and Galleries such as the Dara Birnbaum solo show at Fondazione Prada (Milano, Tokyo); the major Bill Viola Show at Palazzo Reale in Milan; the biggest show about the relationship between art and inflatable at Le Grand Palais (Paris); and many others such as MODAL Gallery (Manchester), Minnesota Street Project (San Francisco), Media Center (New York), Ermitage (San Pietroburgo), Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Roma), MAXXI (Roma), ADI Design Museum (Milano), Museo Riso (Palermo), Stelline (Milano), Istituto Italiano di Cultura Nuova Delhi (India), Ca’ Foscari (Venezia), among others. He has written books and academic essay, such as “The Artist as Inventor” (Rowman & Littlefield, Londra 2021), “Le meraviglie dell’avanguardia. Arte e tecnologia nel primo Novecento” (Carocci, 2023); with Sean Cubitt, “Art in the Age of Ubiquitous Media” and recently the official book about Pistoletto’s Third Paradise (Treccani).

 

Hila Cohen-Schneiderman | Israel

Hila Cohen-Schneiderman, is an Israeli curator, the newly appointed director and chief curator of the Center for Contemporary Art (CCA), Tel Aviv —- Yafo. The recipient of the 2021 Minister of Culture and Sports Award for Curation (Israel). Cohen-Schneiderman specializes in site-specific projects based on artistic research and explores the relationship between artists and art to the public and the urban realm. Between 2018-2024 she acted as Chief Curator of MoBY: Museums of Bat Yam, Israel. Between 2016-17 she curated the Liebling Project – a multi-disciplinary artists residency in collaboration with the Tel Aviv Municipality Conservation Department, which was rethinking the concept of urban conservation.

Between the years 2012-2016, she worked as a curator at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, Israel; and between 2010-2011 she acted as the curator and director of the Spaceship Gallery at Hayarkon 70 social complex, Tel-Aviv. She teaches at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem; MFA program of Shenkar College, Ramat Gan; and the School of Visual Theater, Jerusalem.

She is a graduate of the “Revivim: Honors Program” and holds an MA in Hebrew Literature from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Some of her recent exhibitions include the group show Don’t Say Water Water, Bat Yam Museum of Art, 2023; Eliyahu Fatal solo show: Since Then, Measurements Have Begun, Bat Yam Museum of Art, 2020; the trilogy Plenty – New Age – The Believers, Bat Yam Museum of Art, 2018-2019; Transferumbau: Liebling-Dessau, at Bauhaus Dessau & Liebling Haus 2019; “The Crystal Palace & the Temple of Doom”, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, 2016 and many more.

 

Dávid Fehér | Hungary

Dávid Fehér is Director of the Central European Research Institute for Art History of the Museum of Fine Arts, curator of 20th century and contemporary art at the Museum of Fine Arts, and assistant professor at the Institute of Art History, Eötvös Loránd University. He defended his PhD dissertation on the art of László Lakner at Eötvös Loránd University in 2018. His field of research is Central and Eastern European art history after 1960, with a special focus on the reception of Pop Art and Photorealism, as well as contemporary trends in painting.

His studies have appeared in such catalogues and volumes as International Pop (Walker Art Center, 2015), Art in Hungary 1956–1980: Doublespeak and Beyond (Thames & Hudson, London, 2018), Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary (Getty Publications, Los Angeles, 2018), Abstract Hungary (Sternberg Press, Berlin, 2019) and Dóra Maurer (Tate Publishing, London, 2019). His major curatorial projects include Imre Bak’s exhibition Timely Timelessnes: Layers of an Oeuvre / 1967–2015 (Paks Gallery, 2016), Bacon, Freud and the Painting of the School of London, a joint exhibition with Tate in Budapest (Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, 2018–2019, with Elena Crippa), and Sean Scully’s retrospective exhibition Passenger (Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, 2020; Benaki Museum, Athens, 2021-22; MAMbo, Bologna, 2022; MSU, Zagreb, 2022-23), Henri Matisse: The Colour of Ideas (Museum of Fine Arts, 2022, with Aurélie Verdier), the László Lakner retrospective exhibition entitled Alter Ego (MODEM, Debrecen, 2022) and its alternate version entitled Infinitum (Muzeum Umění Olomouc, 2024, with Barbora Kundračíková).

He was a DAAD fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin in 2013, and was awarded the Ernő Kállai Scholarship in 2011 and 2019–2020. He is a member of the Hungarian Section of AICA.

 

Miguel Mesquita | Portugal

Miguel Mesquita is an Architect and Curator based in Portugal. In 2013, he was a Junior Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES), participating in interdisciplinary projects that connected architecture, sociology, and art. He began his curatorial practice at the Serralves Museum under curator João Ribas, later serving as Artistic Director of BAGINSKI gallery from 2015 to 2018. Since 2018, he has been a cultural consultant for ARCOlisboa. He is the co-founder of PARTE – Portugal Art Encounters, a curatorial research programme supporting the internationalisation of Portugal’s contemporary art scene.

Trained in agroforestry and regenerative agriculture, he co-founded CEENTAA with Jérémy Pajeanc and Graça Passos – a project that intertwines artistic and agricultural practices as a means of recognising ourselves as part of nature, and of recovering art as an essential dimension of life, testing escape routes for the current situation in the world. Writing regularly for Contemporânea magazine, exhibition catalogues, and other art publications, he also develops editorial projects from a curatorial perspective, including the catalogue raisonné of the Walk&Talk festival.

 

Edit Pula | Albania

Edit Pula is an accomplished cultural leader, curator, and producer with a distinguished career spanning public institutions, independent initiatives, and cross-disciplinary artistic projects. As Director of the Tirana Art Gallery since 2023, she has combined strategic management with curatorial vision, fostering national and international collaborations, expanding public access to the arts, and commissioning innovative participatory projects. Her leadership has brought landmark exhibitions such as 39 works by Andy Warhol from a private collection to Albanian audiences, while also championing both established and emerging Albanian artists.

She also initiated the first Affordable Art Fair in Albania, creating a new platform for artists to connect directly with the public and broaden art accessibility. Beyond her work in the visual arts, Edit has a proven record in creating and developing cultural institutions from concept to operation. She is the founder of The Home of Polyphony Museum in Gjirokastër, the first music museum in Albania dedicated to the UNESCO-recognized tradition of Albanian folk iso-polyphony. Her portfolio includes directing the transformation of urban and historical spaces into active cultural venues, producing music projects, and curating multidisciplinary festivals. Over more than two decades, she has initiated and co-founded numerous platforms that blend contemporary art, heritage, and community engagement. Her work consistently bridges local and international contexts, fostering dialogue between tradition and contemporary , artists and audiences, and positioning Albanian culture within the global creative landscape.

 

Dorothea Schöne | Germany

Dorothea Schöne has been the Artistic Director of the Kunsthaus Dahlem in Berlin since 2014. She studied art history, political science, sociology, and philosophy at Leipzig University. From 2005–2006, she was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Riverside, and from 2006 to 2009 she worked at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as curatorial assistant for the exhibition Art of Two Germanys/Cold War Cultures, which was later shown in Nuremberg and Berlin in 2010. From 2010 to 2014 she worked as a freelance curator and art critic while simultaneously completing her dissertation. In 2015 she received her PhD in art history with a focus on Berlin’s postwar modernism.

For her research she has been awarded several fellowships and grants, including the Robert R. Rifkind Scholar-in-Residency Grant (2019), the Doina Popescu Postdoctoral Fellowship at Ryerson University Toronto (2015), the Getty Library Research Grant, and a DAAD travel grant (2011). In 2012 she was a fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington D.C., and in 2018 she served as guest curator at the HOW Art Museum in Shanghai.

In 2021 she was awarded the Hans and Lea Grundig Prize, which honors research and exhibitions dedicated to persecuted and ostracized artists. In May 2024 she was invited as a Researcher in Residence at the Haugar Kunstmuseum in Norway, and in August of the same year she served as an Advisory Scholar at the invitation of Arenet (The Americas Research Network) in Puebla, Mexico.

In the summer of 2025 she was awarded the The Americas Award for Art and Culture by Arenet. In the fall of that year, together with Greta de León, she will serve as guest curator of the BienalSur for the exhibition Hilo Común at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca in Mexico.