Jacob Fabricius

Jacob Fabricius is curator and writer based in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Recently Fabricius finished as director at Art Hub Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Artistic director (with Seolhui Lee) at the Korean Pavilion 2024, featuring KOO Jeong A’s Odorama Cities, Venice Biennale. Previously Fabricius has been director at Malmö Konsthall, Malmö, Sweden (2008-12) and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, Denmark (2013-14) and artistic director at Kunsthal Aarhus Aarhus, Denmark (2016-2021), where he has curated numerous of international exhibitions. He has been associated curator at Center d’Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain (2005-06), Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (2005-07), cneai, Chatou, France (2015-16), and Rond-point projects, Marseille, France (2015-16). He has been the Artistic director of the following biennales Words at an Exhibition 《열 장의 이야기와 다섯 편의 시》 An exhibition in ten chapters and five poems, Busan Biennale, Busan, South Korea (2020), Leisure, Discipline and Punishment, 6th Biennial of Moving Image, Mechelen, Belgium (2013) among others.

Fabricius is a Mads Øvlisen Research Fellow at Aarhus University, Denmark, and Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden, from 2022 to 2025.
Fabricius is the founder of the publishing company Pork Salad Press and newspaper project Old News.
Fabricius is currently boardmember at Ole Faarups Kunstfond (2013-present), previously he has been boardmember at Thoravej29 (2023-2025), Simian (2022-23), Danish Art Council - Legatudvalget for Billedkunst (2016-2019), and Klara Karolines Fond Stiftet af Aase og Poul Gernes (2008-2014).

Recent curated exhibitions: Setting the Tone of the Exhibition (outside-in), Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China / Setting the Tone of the Exhibition (prologue body), Inside-Out Art Museum, Beijing, China / Two Minutes Every Three Weeks and Two Minutes Everyday, Pavilion, 16th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea, Co-Curator with Kristian Kirk and Johanne Jacobsen / Budbringer (Messenger), Copenhagen, sign up as delivery Wolt person and will deliver food and art to people.

Anslagets kunst / Setting the Tone of the Exhibition

Curators and exhibition makers have an incredible number of things to consider when it comes down to the production of an exhibition. Through titles, graphic design, Social Media, locations, spatial narratives, artworks, books, and seminars, curators set the tone for the viewer’s first encounter with the exhibition. Often this involves small subtle curatorial decisions and invisible things that only a trained professional eye will notice. There are usually high expectations of what exhibitions are, their theme and artists, what exhibitions consist of, how they appear, which artists are invited, how they mediate and present work to the viewer. From titles to leaflets, from invitations to talks, from labels to lights, from seminars to screenings the viewer wants to be astonished yet guided, surprised yet educated. Altogether, these elements are part of an exhibition maker’s task, and even the smallest things—elements that visitors may take for granted—contribute to the mood, the dramaturgy, and in setting the tone of the exhibition.

The project Setting the Tone of the Exhibition – a book and a series of five exhibitions in Sweden, Denmark and China – will be used as examples to show curatorial methods that aims to broaden the discourse around exhibition making.