Raphael Fonseca to Lead Culturgest's Visual Arts Programming in May
Art Curator and Historian Raphael Fonseca Appointed New Visual Arts Programmer at Culturgest
Starting in May, Raphael Fonseca—a curator and art historian—will take on the role of visual arts programmer at Culturgest, following a competitive selection process, the institution announced in a statement on Tuesday.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1988, Fonseca joins from the Denver Art Museum in the United States, where he has served since 2021 as curator and head of the Modern and Contemporary Latin American Art Department.
He succeeds Bruno Marchand, who in March of this year became deputy director of Lisbon's Museum of Art, Architecture, and Technology (MAAT).
A curator and researcher whose work spans the intersection of curation, art history, criticism, and education, Fonseca holds a PhD in Art Criticism and History from the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), a master's in Art History from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), and a bachelor's in Art History from UERJ.
Between 2016 and 2019, he worked as a curator at the Niterói Contemporary Art Museum in Brazil, according to his biographical details provided by Culturgest.
Currently, Fonseca is also curator of the Taiwan Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale, co-curator of the 3rd Counterpublic Triennial in St. Louis (USA), and one of the organizers of the Sequences Festival, set to take place in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2027.
He is among the curators of the exhibition "May I Help You? Posso Ajudar?", recently inaugurated at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea/Centro Cultural de Belém (MAC/CCB) in Lisbon, in collaboration with Nuria Enguita, the museum's director, and Marta Mestre.
His recent projects include serving as chief curator of "Estalo", the 14th Mercosul Biennial (Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2025), "Lúcido Devaneio" (Porto Municipal Gallery, 2025), and "Fullgás: Visual Arts and the 1980s in Brazil" (Centro Cultural Brasil, 2024–2025).
Throughout his career, Fonseca has collaborated with institutions in Brazil, including the Museu de Arte do Rio; in Portugal, with the José de Guimarães International Arts Centre, the Cerveira Biennial Foundation, and Hangar; in Germany, with Haus der Kunst in Munich; in Singapore, with the Institute of Contemporary Arts; and in the Netherlands, with Framer Framed in Amsterdam.
For the third consecutive year (2023, 2024, and 2025), he has been named one of the 100 most influential figures in the visual arts by ArtReview magazine, the statement notes.
According to Culturgest, Bruno Marchand will continue to oversee the visual arts programming at the exhibition space until the end of 2026, concluding a curatorial cycle that began in 2020.
