Jens Hoffmann

Jens Hoffmann Mesén (born 1974 in San José, Costa Rica) is a writer, editor, educator, and exhibition maker. His work has attempted to expand the definition and context of exhibition making. From 2003 to 2007 Hoffmann was director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London. He is the former director of the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art from 2007 to 2016 and deputy director for exhibitions and programs at The Jewish Museum from 2012 to 2017; he was terminated from the position following an investigation into sexual harassment allegations raised by staff members. Hoffmann has held several teaching positions including California College of the Arts, the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti and Goldsmiths, University of London, as well as others.

Hoffmann trained as a theater director, studied stage directing and dramaturgy at the Ernst Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin. He holds an M.A. from DasArts: School for Advanced Research in Theater and Dance Studies at the Amsterdam University of the Arts. His early work was interested in postdramatic theatre, not based on dramatic text.

From 1993 to 1995 Hoffmann worked as an assistant dramaturg under Tom Stromberg at Theater am Turm (TAT) in Frankfurt, where he worked on productions of such directors as Rene Pollesch, Stefan Pucher, Reza Abdoh, Needcompany, Michael Laub, Jan Fabre, Baktruppen, Gob Squad, and Heiner Goebbels. With Stromberg Hoffmann organized Theater Outlines, the performing-arts program of Documenta X in Kassel (1997).

Hoffmann started his museum career as an intern at the Portikus Kunsthalle Frankfurt in 1995, followed by two years at the Dia Art Foundation in New York from 1995 until 1997. He worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as an assistant curator from 1998 until 2000. From 2001 to 2002 Hoffmann worked as a curator at the Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf. From 2003 to 2007 Hoffmann was the director of exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and from 2007 to 2012 director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts in San Francisco. In addition Hoffmann was director of the Capp Street Project from 2007 to 2012, San Francisco. From 2012 to 2017 he was deputy director of the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) in New York. In 2017 he was guest curator at the Fundación Arte in Buenos Aires.

Since 2006, Hoffmann has worked as a curator and senior advisor for the Kadist Art Foundation, for which he formed the Americana Collection, featuring over 300 works by emerging artists from Latin and North America. He also organized Camera of Wonders for Kadist, bringing together photographic works from the Kadist Art Foundation and the Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel (CIAC), Mexico City, which opened at the Centro de la Imagen (Center of the Image) in Mexico City in November 2015, and traveled to the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia in 2016.

Between 2013 and 2017, Hoffmann was the curator for special programs and a member of the selection committee of the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, New York. Hoffmann was a guest curator for the 30th Istanbul Film Festival in 2011, for which he organized a series of screenings Untitled (Film), including films by Peter Watkins, William E. Jones, Ousmane Sembène, Tevfik Başer, Derek Jarman, Guy Debord, Konrad Wolf, and others. In 2012, together with Edoardo Bonaspetti, Andrea Lissoni, and Filipa Ramos, Hoffmann developed the ongoing Vdrome.org, an online platform offering screenings of films and videos directed by visual artists and filmmakers.

In 2007 Hoffmann founded the Museum of Modern Art and Western Antiquities, for which he has curated two exhibitions: Section IV, Department of Light Recordings: Lens Drawings, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris (2013), and Section III, Department of Pigments on Surface: Very Abstract and Hyper Figurative, Thomas Dane Gallery, London (2007). The next exhibition for the Museum of Modern Art and Western Antiquities will be Section II, Department of Carving and Modeling (2019).

In 2009 he founded the People's Biennial with artist Harrell Fletcher. The People's Biennial explores and presents the creative activities of individuals and collectives as expressions of society's cultural diversity that would otherwise be overlooked, neglected, or even actively repressed.