prof. doc. Mgr. Michal Koleček, Ph.D.

Born 1966; curator of contemporary art, art historian, lives and works in Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic. He graduated from the Department of History and Czech Literature at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem (1986–1992, Master‘s degree) and the Department of Theory of Art Socialization at Masaryk University in Brno (1995–2002, Ph.D. degree). In 2010 he was elected an associate professor at Masaryk University in Brno. From 1994 to 2007 he worked as a head of the Department of History and Theory of Art at the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem. From 2007 to 2016 he was the Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem. Since 2016 he has been the Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem. Between 1994 and 2001 he worked in the position of a chief curator of the Emil Filla Gallery in Usti nad Labem. During the years 2002–2003 he worked as a curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery in Prague. In 2003 he curated the SUPERSTART project of the Czech-Slovak Pavilion at the 50th Venice Biennial. Since 2016 he has been the chief-curator of Usti nad Labem House of Arts.

As a free-lance curator he has collaborated with the following institutions: Art Workshop Lazareti, Dubrovnik, Croatia; Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaujvaros, Hungary; City Gallery Prague, Czech Republic; <rotor> association for contemporary art, Graz, Austria; Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig, Germany; Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israel; Exit Gallery Peje, Kosovo; House of Arts, Brno, Czech Republic; Kunst im Őffentlichen Raum, Vienna, Austria; Forum Stadtpark, Graz, Austria; Mücsarnok/Kunsthalle Budapest, Hungary; Wyspa Progres Foundation, Gdansk, Poland; Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok, Poland; Chelsea Art Museum, New York, USA; Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova, Turku, Finland; Art Museum, Pori, Finland; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Croatia etc.

In 2007 he edited the publication Framing of Art – an anthology reflecting the institutional context of Central European contemporary art in the post-totalitarian period of social and political transformation (authors: Barnabás Bencsik; Vladimír Beskid; Michal Koleček; Margarethe Makovec & Anton Lederer; Darko Šimičić; Barbara Steiner).