Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Laurence Schmidlin (*1982) holds a MA and a PhD in humanities from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, as well as a MAS in Cultural Management from the University of Lausanne and the University of Geneva. She has held a number of positions in several art museums in Switzerland and abroad. Her previous roles include in particular Deputy Director of the Musée Jenisch Vevey and Head of the Cabinet cantonal des estampes (2013-2017), and curator of contemporary art at the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne (2017-2022). Since 2022, she has been Director of the Musée d'art du Valais, Sion | Kunstmuseum Wallis, Sitten. In 2012, she co-founded the Rosa Brux art space in Brussels. An art critic and regular contributor to exhibition catalogues, she is actively engaged in research and has been awarded grants and fellowships from prestigious institutions, including The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, the Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art in Paris, the Fonds national suisse (FNS) de la recherche scientifique, and the AAMC (Association of Art Museum Curators). She is particularly interested in drawings and prints, contemporary art and all forms of intermediality. Her doctoral thesis («''The Drawingness of Drawing.'' The Spatialization of Drawing in American Art of the 1960s and 1970s») examines the expansion of drawing into space, its development through performance and sculpture, its status as a medium and its definition through its exhibition. It was published in an abridged and revised version by Presses du réel, Dijon, in 2019.