It’s About Modesty
Daniel Baumann & Brit Barton
When Daniel Baumann announced his departure after a decade as director of Kunsthalle Zürich in 2024, he did so without announcing a next step or much explanation. For a Swiss institutional curator, this felt extra odd and especially risky. Although maybe it wasn't all that surprising. Daniel often made no sense—or so it seemed.
Shortly after his announcement, he published What Happened to the Curator?—a widely discussed text on institutions, political pressures, and the shifting expectations placed upon cultural producers. Praised for its candor and vulnerability, the essay offered a rare public reckoning from someone in a position often defined by its discretion and diplomacy.
This May, Daniel and I met in Vienna to continue that conversation but turned our attention toward Switzerland and his curatorial choices in retrospect. What role does risk play in a society built on moderation and compromise? How much instability can a culture of stability tolerate? And what happens when exceptionalism begins to look like a threat?
Brit Barton: Maybe it’s the Vienna of it all, but I wanted to begin with a confession.
Daniel Baumann: You want me to confess to you?
BB: Nooo! I’m confessing to you!
DB: Oh, thank god.
BB: My confession is that I haven’t always been your biggest fan.
DB: Oh. Fair enough. Why?
BB: In preparing for this, you know, all my interactions with you filtered through my mind. I remember at one point, this one night, I even yelled at you! I’m sorry, Daniel! But I was frustrated. I realized I didn’t understand what you were interested in. I didn’t know who you were or what you were trying to say through your curatorial choices.
I kept thinking: What the hell are you even about?
Although, to be fair, you are also responsible for one of the worst, most assaulting exhibitions I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.
DB: I know exactly which one you mean.
BB: The NFT show.
DB: Ah. Yes.
BB: Maybe this is the biggest part of the confession: The day after the NFT opening, there was an opening at Sentiment gallery. A group of us huddled in the corner and discussed staging a coup.
DB: That’s quite an honor.
BB: Obviously, we failed miserably. You’re still alive—and luckily!—sitting here with me.
DB: Well, thank you. I appreciate this. I think it’s a good way to enter the question of risk.
I can understand why you wondered what the hell I was doing. But honestly, when I started as director of Kunsthalle Zürich, that was exactly the point: to create a program where nobody understood who I was or what I was doing—including myself.
I didn’t want to turn curating into branding. So instead of building a recognizable and marketable identity, I wanted a practice that was unpredictable and difficult to pin down.
Of course, that carried the risk of misunderstanding.
And the NFT show was exactly this because I didn’t understand it either. I didn’t understand the aesthetics, nor the mechanics or the community behind it. I was interested in the phenomenon itself, and if there was art in there and how it worked or pretended to work as an alternative to the established art world. So yes, I was not interested in making another show that simply satisfied my peer group. It was both exciting and disappointing.
BB: I can assure you that you were never really at risk of appeasing or satisfying your community. If anything, I can think of a number of times you were deeply antagonistic towards the Zürich art scene. It almost felt like a reverse relational aesthetic, like you wanted to make sure you did not relate to us.
I heard stories too. Mitchell told me you once sold the Kunsthalle to a church?
DB: I didn’t sell it to a church.
BB: Fine. But there were other exhibitions and smaller gestures that made me think: You really hate Zürich.
DB: No. I don’t hate anyone. What I hate are norms, conventions, branding, risk management, vision statements, all of that. And yes, part of the program was antagonistic.
What surprised me wasn’t that people hated the NFT show. I expected that. What surprised me was that almost nobody reacted to the church project. The Reformierte Kirche Zürich—the Protestant Church of Zurich—approached me because it was celebrating the five hundred year anniversary of the Reformation in 2017. They asked if I wanted to do an exhibition about it. And I thought: I don’t want to make a show about the church. I want to do the thing itself.
I was not interested in pretending a superior and correct or balanced position to celebrate the institution's authority. The American artist Rob Pruitt agreed to go along with this, and he built a beautiful, funny, partly provocative, and touching exhibition that was indeed used for Sunday services, held by students of the University of Zürich Faculty of Theology. I was also interested in the question of spirituality.
Another perspective was historical. We all know how the artists emancipated themselves from the church and the nobility—this is an important part of modernism. They became “free artists” and sold their work on the free market. It’s reversing now, the world is becoming neo-feudal again, the same is true for contemporary art. But what about religion? Will art go back to religion again? I actually think so, but it is now called spirituality. We should talk about this, that is why it felt right to do this exhibition. I was honestly surprised more people weren’t angry about it.
BB: Except me and Mitchell.
DB: My beloved local haters.
BB: We’re here to keep you humble, Schatzi! But, all that to say, taking on subjects like the NFT exhibition or this church project, they make sense now in terms of looking back at your moves being driven by non-moves, or at least out of a motivation for inquiry rather than resolution. And in the moment, I didn’t get it. Maybe after a while, it felt like you didn’t even want me to try.
But! I do have to counter all that by mentioning one of my absolute favorite memories of you—which also happened out of an exhibition I deeply hated. The one with Christopher Kulendran Thomas, where you invited Dean Kissick to speak.
DB: It was Christopher who invited Dean to speak.
BB: Yes, yes. He invited. Well, halfway through the talk, most of us in the audience left in protest or boredom. We basically started a parallel party outside on the terrace while we got that one board member to go back in and sneak out a bunch of wine.
After the talk, you came out and just said, “Hey guys, there’s pizza inside if you want.” It was genuinely sweet. I was worried you’d be angry at us for being so rude.
DB: No, no. I often don’t experience contradictions or renitency the way other people do, or I don’t care. Well, sometimes I do. As long as reactions are heartfelt, I’m fine with them. Anger can feel real. Arrogance is what bores me. People say, “yeah, because that's out of insecurity.” All right, but then please be insecure.
BB: Agreed. Absolutely.
DB: With Dean, I think he drank an entire bottle of red wine during the talk. By the end he became very nostalgic, which can happen…
BB: Yeah. He does that, doesn’t he?
DB: Is it his speciality? The glamour of the good old days? But honestly, I didn’t mind you all leaving because it felt sincere, not performative.
With my unpredictable programming, it was my attempt to say goodbye to perfectionism as a form of basic insecurity and deadening professionalism. It also has to do with pluralism and democracy, with multiple voices and their visibility. It all seemed messy, but I was confident that it might make sense at some point.
BB: Or maybe not…
DB: Or maybe not.
BB: But it's what I’ve come to deeply appreciate about you: as much as you’re antagonistic, you’re also open to antagonism. And that messiness, of course. That was all an essential part of your programming and maybe a shock to my system when I moved to Zürich in the first place.
In preparing for this, I made notes comparing and defining the words “Swiss” and “Risk” which really cemented their juxtaposition. Switzerland culturally represents stability, moderation, neutrality. Risk feels antithetical to that. Would you agree?
DB: It’s complicated, but yes, Switzerland is the home of some powerful global insurance and reinsurance companies. There is innovative production, not only in the cheese sector, but also in pharma, watches, architecture, banking, even art. But innovation and risk are often linked to exceptional individuals, and this is a country that doesn’t easily welcome heroes, except maybe Roger Federer and his very Swiss modesty. Heroes threaten our political and social system built on compromise. We constantly work on balancing different forces.
BB: So risk is essential—but it should be done in moderation—and done by those who feign modesty and understand that it is inherent to their approved exceptionalism? That their exceptionalism is dependent on their modesty?
DB: It’s deeply Swiss. You keep the ball low. Showing off is dangerous. You have to be modest. Except in Zürich…
BB: Oh shoosh! Doesn’t that also create a culture that rewards mediocrity? Especially in the arts. Everything becomes formulaic: the Swiss system, this standard of averageness—school, the Kiefer Hablitzel│Göhner art prize, the Swiss Art Award, the Manor prize, an Umbau commission, the bank collections, the Kanton support, the Pro Helvetia residencies and grants, the same Swiss collectors, and status quo institutional approval; on and on and on.
It is a cycle of sameness that breeds predictability. I can think of a lot of people who don’t fit this standard but who are interesting or have something else to offer. Yet, it still feels that anyone exceptional, or at least out of this ordinary, becomes threatening. Why?
DB: It is a problem. People leave the country to succeed somewhere else, it is too small.
BB: But doesn’t that infuriate you?! There is this perception that it's just raining money but in actuality a lot of what gets funded is—it’s all—it’s weird!
DB: Well yes, I agree with you, and it's weird, and especially if you come from the US where there is this idea of the self-made man through exceptional achievements.
BB: Or woman!
DB: Self-made person. But not everyone has to be a star.
BB: But isn’t it just a cycle, continually rewarding basic and boring?
DB: It might be less about mediocrity. Switzerland has four languages and is a collage of very different histories and regions with each canton having great political and fiscal autonomy. How to keep this together?
BB: When I was up for an award, one juror from a different region literally asked me: “Aren’t you too ambitious?”
DB: So embarrassing. That’s Switzerland.
BB: Tell me about it.
My immediate, inherent visceral reaction was to say, "It's a time for ambition.” I figured the whole thing was done for and then, I won! I was shocked but obviously very happy for the support. Although, in getting the award, I was also simultaneously told I’d probably never receive institutional support again.
DB: That’s then bureaucracy and Swiss mentality speaking: Don’t get full of yourself. Administrators fear exceptionalism because they’re trying to maintain equilibrium across regions, genders, languages, generations.
BB: So exceptionalism itself becomes threatening. Exceptionalism is the Swiss risk. That’s… depressing.
DB: No, I don’t think it's depressing. Switzerland still produces many risk-takers. Growing up in such a consensual system creates a special kind of energy. Breaking the mold requires enormous force.
In America, success is rewarded with money. In Switzerland, success is often rewarded psychologically—the satisfaction of breaking through conformity. It's more social-democratic… Everyone should be rewarded here and there and a little bit, even if they think they are average...
BB: Do you feel average?
DB: It could bother me. But yeah. A bit.
BB: Oh, a bit? Uh huh.
DB: Do you?
BB: Well I certainly don’t strive to be boring!
There’s also the stealth wealth part of Swiss culture. Many artists and curators know they’ll eventually inherit property or financial security, but paradoxically they become less willing to take risks even if they know they’re consequently set-up.
DB: Because risk is tied to fear. If you have something to lose, you become conservative. That’s true everywhere. And your generation—The Millennials—especially seem terrified of errors and exposure.
BB: Everyone is scared of error. Exposure in what sense though?
DB: Exposure of the self. Exposure through risk. If you take risks publicly, people push back. To risk something, you have to become somewhat fearless. You might not be loved.
BB: Right. I think this is where I glitch; there is so much validation built into the system here. Love and admiration is the default reception or expectation…but in order to evolve, there has to be some resistance to make the effort of value, no?
I think this is partially why your resignation text mattered and probably why the Spike piece got the reaction that it did. There was a public acknowledgement and brutal reckoning to the order in a way younger curators often can’t or just refuse to.
DB: Exactly. A younger person writing that text would have looked bitter or defeated.
I could write it because I already had a career—I was never so interested in making one —although I’m ambitious, yes, ambitious in making sense.
BB: Yet, you argue for more of an inherent messiness?
DB: Well, within a system that, in my opinion, is too ordinary, yes, to create space. I do have an anarchistic side.
BB: Oh completely. I don’t think enough people recognize this about you.
DB: I might be a punk at heart.
BB: …that’s the most Gen X thing I’ve ever heard.
DB: I hide it. I want people to walk into it and get shot.
BB: I think your past relationship with corporations like Nestlé is part of that contradiction too.
DB: Well, reality is contradictory. Public education and most cultural funding in Switzerland comes indirectly from taxes paid by corporations like UBS, Roche, Novartis, and Nestlé.
People criticize those companies while simultaneously benefiting from the systems they sustain.
BB: C’est la vie. What can you do?
DB: I think it's better to embrace that reality fundamentally.
BB: That was a huge cultural shift for me coming from the United States. There is some public funding, but more often than not institutions survive through philanthropy and private fundraising. In Europe, the Kunsthalle—and culture more broadly—is an apparatus of the state; all is well and good when the state is a liberal democracy, but when it isn’t...
I mean look at how heavy-handed this is in Berlin right now: everyone is freaking out because they’ve lost the funding they’ve only ever known to have as artists or cultural producers.
DB: There is indeed a fundamental difference, as European culture was deeply connected to the rise and the way the bourgeois society defined itself. The ultimate luxury of bourgeois society was being able to sustain people who refused bourgeois values. Artists, troublemakers, outsiders—they were tolerated because they also renewed the system and ultimately showed its strength.
BB: There’s this American idiom I always think about: “A rising tide lifts all ships.” I explained it recently to a Berliner who couldn’t really fathom this concept or the idea that one person succeeding inevitably creates opportunities for others too. I think it works in tandem with Switzerland as well.
DB: In Europe, a rising tide, the exceptional achievement, creates jealousy and fear. But the danger is when exceptionalism turns into inequality. That’s the crisis we’re living through now, when wealth no longer lifts everyone, but accumulates around the very few: The rising tide lifts the peers. This is tribalism: economically, socially, and culturally. Historically, societies eventually react to that imbalance through revolutions or wars.
BB: So are you ultimately pro the Swiss system of moderation and compromise? I want to ask again: Do you think that exceptionalism is a Swiss risk?
DB: I’m not a fan of inequality. I think a strong middle class is not a bad thing, even if it’s boring. But societies need both stability and risk-taking. Democracy is the constant balancing of those and many other forces. There are no final solutions. Only continuous adjustments, it is hard work, and often not very spectacular.
BB: Should I, as a freelance worker, then desire to kill the director of an art institution, who arguably is exceptional, for the sake of a revolution? Should your successor be worried, for instance; will the next coup be successful?
DB: It might not make any difference…and you will look ridiculous.
BB: Well, that’s going to happen anyway. I’d still like to believe people fundamentally want to contribute something good. That risk can ultimately benefit everyone.
DB: Me too. Even though humans are primitive, selfish, and fearful.
BB: And stupid.
DB: So stupid. That’s also part of the menu.
BB: The menu! Where we eat the rich.
DB: Bon appétit.
Brit and Daniel in Vienna, May 2026
Daniel Baumann, an art historian, curator and critic, was director of the Kunsthalle Zürich from 2015 to 2026. He co-curates the annual Engadin Art Talks, teaches at Zurich University of the Arts and is a curator at Casa São Roque in Porto.
Brit Barton is an artist and writer. She is the editor of Art & Order Journal.