Wohlen, Berne, Switzerland
Dr. Valentina Locatelli is an Italian and Swiss independent curator and writer based in Bern, Switzerland. She is the co-founder and president of art+château, a Bern-based non-profit organisation that develops exhibitions and artistic projects in dialogue with historic spaces, architecture, and cultural heritage. Working across historical and contemporary art, her practice combines curatorial research, exhibition-making, and publishing. As an independent curator, she has developed international exhibitions and artistic projects for museums, galleries, and cultural institutions. In 2019, she curated the programme dedicated to modern and contemporary Latin American art at Art Paris Art Fair at the Grand Palais. Dr. Locatelli has also collaborated with leading Swiss institutions including the Fondation Beyeler, Kunstmuseum Bern, and the Museo d’Arte della Svizzera Italiana (MASI) in Lugano, contributing to exhibition research, catalogue production, provenance research and curatorial coordination. At Fondation Beyeler, she worked on several major exhibition catalogues published by Hatje Cantz, including 'Basquiat', 'Segantini', 'Brancusi & Serra', and 'Surrealism in Paris'. Selected curatorial projects include the exhibitions 'Open Sesame! Anker, Hodler, Segantini… Masterpieces from the Foundation for Art, Culture and History' and 'Without Restraint: Works by Mexican Women Artists from the Daros Latinamerica Collection' at Kunstmuseum Bern, as well as monographic exhibitions with international contemporary artists including Eamon Ore-Giron and Yuan Yuan. She is the author and editor of several publications, including 'Kunstmuseum Bern: Masterpieces' (Hirmer Verlag, 2016), 'Cybèle Varela: Tropicalismo Remixed' (Silvana Editoriale, 2018), and 'A Journey Through a Private Art Collection: From Balkenhol to Villeglé' (Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2024). Dr. Locatelli holds a PhD in Text Theory and Analysis from the University of Bergamo and a Master of Advanced Studies in Museology from the University of Geneva. She speaks Italian, English, French, and German, and has a working knowledge of Spanish. www.valentinalocatelli.ch
Co-founder and President of the non-profit art association art+château (Bern), responsible for artistic program development, fundraising, budget management, timeline planning, and event coordination. art+château is a not-for-profit association created in 2018 and based in Bern, Switzerland. art+château works with both emerging and established artists from around the globe to present contemporary art within alternative historic settings outside of the “white cube”. art+château’s mission is to build a platform for the exchange between local and international art scenes and make it accessible to a diverse public.
Curatorial supervision of an Art in Architecture project (Pöschwies Correctional Facility).
Curator of three contemporary art exhibitions: 2025: "The Herbarium of Memory: Laura De Bernardi, Gergana Mantscheva, Laura Sanchez Filomeno" The exhibition presents paintings, drawings, objects and installations by three Swiss and international women artists whose artistic practices are united by a deeply introspective approach to personal and collective identity. Employing real seeds and dried plant specimens as well as embroidered, hand-stitched or painted plants and rhizomes, each one of these artists engages with the concept and epistemological meaning of the ‘herbarium’ to offer three different yet complementary artistic statements about life and memory. 2023: "Sean Shanahan: Plainsong" The exhibition at Espace Muraille is Shanahan’s first solo show in Switzerland. It is the latest result of the artist’s painstaking and ongoing research on the relationship that exists between the pictorial surface, the three-dimensional support and the architectural elements of the space where his artworks are presented. 2021: "Eamon Ore-Giron: Autotune" Eamon Ore-Giron blends a wide-range of visual styles and influences in his brightly colored abstract geometric paintings. The exhibition at Espace Muraille is the artist’s first show in continental Europe. It will present eighteen newly produced paintings of different scales from the artist’s ongoing Infinite Regress series as well as two loom-woven tapestries created in collaboration with the Taller Mexicano de Gobelinos in Guadalajara, Mexico. The exhibition at Espace Muraille is an opportunity to investigate Ore-Giron’s visual practice, in which the historic and visual legacies of the Global South meet and converge with North American and European modernist traditions, and suggest its relationship to music and sound.
Co-organized and coordinated an international conference on the sculptor Vincenzo Vela at the Museo Vincenzo Vela.