Marietta Piekenbrock

Marietta Piekenbrock (born 1964, Westphalia) is a German curator, dramaturg, author and arts administrator. Piekenbrock's projects combine theatre, dance, performance and music with cultural history, architecture and everyday life. For the European Capitals of Culture RUHR.2010and Istanbul.2010, and for the Ruhrtriennale 2012–14, she invited international artists and curators to collaborate with the local cultural players on developing new artistic projects in areas of radical social change. Her programmes of events and initiatives made a strong case for sustainable cultural practice. Her 2012 series of events ‘No Education’ promoted a new discourse on the relationship between art, children and education.

Piekenbrock studied Theatre Studies, Philosophy and Art History in Aix-en-Provence, Munich and Paris, where she first worked as an author, curator and translator. In subsequent years she collaborated closely with theatres, museums, galleries, archives and publishers on generating exhibitions, installations and artists’ books. From 2000 she was active as an independent journalist for various newspapers and periodicals, from 2003 as drama critic for the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.From 2004 she worked as dramaturg at the Ruhrtriennale. In 2007 she joined the administration of the European Capital of Culture RUHR.2010 as head of music, theatre, dance and performance programming. The composer and theatre director Heiner Goebbels appointed her chief dramaturg at the Ruhrtriennale 2012–14.

Piekenbrock is a member of various specialist juries, including those of the Literature Prize of the City of Munich (2005), of ‘Favoriten’, Festival of Free Theatre, German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) (2008, 2010), of the George Tabori Prize awarded by the German Performing Arts Fund, Berlin (2010), and the Mauricio Kagel Music Prize of the NRW Arts Fund, Düsseldorf (2011, 2013). Since 2010 she has been a committee member of the German Performing Arts Fund, Berlin.

As author and editor she has published numerous artist monographs, exhibition catalogs as well as articles in newspapers and professional journals. Since 2013 she holds a lectureship at the faculty of “cultural reflection” at the University Witten / Herdecke. Marietta Piekenbrock lives in Essen.