On the occassion of the 15th European Cultural Brand Awards, Yvette Mutumba and Julia Grosse, Founders and Artistic Directors of the multimedia platform Contemporary And (C&), were presented with the internationally renowned « European Cultural Manager of the Year » award for 2020.

« It is a great honor to receive this award. We share this prize with the global network of C& and are very proud of this prestigious recognition. C& engages in discourses which go beyond the idea of centricity and singular narratives. To be awarded ‘European Cultural Manager of the Year’ exemplifies a broader understanding of the arts and cultural scenes which are not divisible into ‘us’ and ‘the others' », said Mutumba and Grosse.

An independent jury of 42 experts chose Mutumba and Grosse from a shortlist including Eike Schmidt (Director of the Uffizi Galleries, Florence) and Malte Boecker (Director of the Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, and Artistic Director of BTHVN2020). The award ceremony was streamed live from the Nikolaisaal in Potsdam.

Thomas Girst, Head of BMW Group Cultural Engagement and member of the jury: « It is nothing short of fantastic that this year around the award honored a team made up of Yvette Mutumba and Julia Grosse. Teamwork is essentiell. Writer, curator, art historian, journalist, custodian, publicist, lecturer. Together, the both of them represent nearly every facet of an internationally positioned art world. »

Among others, the decision of the expert jury was based on criteria such as exemplary creative will and trendsetting inventiveness, network-building, new approaches in cultural mediation as well as sustainability as part of the management.

Yvette Mutumba is a lecturer at the Institute of Art in Context, University of Arts, Berlin and is Curator-at-Large at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Yvette was part of the Curatorial Team of the 10th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2018) and Visiting Professor for ‘Global Discourses’ at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne (2017-2018). 2012 to 2016 she worked at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Mutumba studied Art History at Freie Universität Berlin and holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London.

Julia Grosse is an art historian, journalist and a lecturer at the Institute for Art in Context at the University of the Arts in Berlin. She worked as a columnist and arts correspondent in London for international publications. Grosse has published articles in various art publications and co-edited several books, her latest title « Ein Leben lang » – which can be translated as « For a lifetime » – tells the lovestory of her grandparents, spanning over 70 years. Most recently, she curated the festival « Friendly Confrontations: Festival for Global Art and Institutional Critique » at the Kammerspiele München.

Together they are the founders and artistic directors of Contemporary And (C&), a dynamic platform comprising the publications C& Magazine and C& América Latina Magazine as well as C& Projects and C& Education.

Former recipients of the « European Cultural Manager of the Year » include Hedwig Fijen, Founding Director of Manifesta (2019), Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern (2017), Thomas Girst, Head of BMW Group Cultural Engagement (2016) and Udo Kittelmann, former Director of the Nationalgalerie (2013).

Initiated by Hans-Conrad Walter, Cultural Manager and CEO of Causales, the Cultural Brand Awards took place in the 15th consecutive year, recognizing eight different categories. www.cultural-brands.com/causales.