Lorenzo Balbi

Lorenzo Balbi was born in Rivoli (Turin) in 1982.

Art critic and curator, since 1 September 2026 he has been Director of the Musei Civici di Verona, which include the Anfiteatro Arena, the Casa di Giulietta, the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Achille Forti, the Museo Archeologico al Teatro Romano, the Museo degli Affreschi G.B. Cavalcaselle alla Tomba di Giulietta, the Museo di Castelvecchio, the Museo di Storia Naturale, the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano, the Arche Scaligere and the Chiesa di San Giorgetto.

Since 2022 he has been President of AMACI - Associazione Musei d'Arte Contemporanea Italiani.

From 2017 to 2026 he was Director of MAMbo - Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna and Head of the Modern and Contemporary Art Area of the Settore Musei Civici di Bologna, which encompasses, alongside MAMbo, Villa delle Rose, Museo Morandi, Casa Morandi, Museo per la Memoria di Ustica and the Sandra Natali artist residency.

From 2006 to 2017, at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, he taught Curatorial Methodology at CAMPO, a training course for curators, and was responsible for the organization and development of exhibition projects at the institution's spaces in Turin and Guarene d'Alba, in addition to curating numerous exhibitions of the Collezione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo abroad and several editions of the Residenza per Giovani Curatori Stranieri project.

In 2018 he took on the artistic direction of ART CITY Bologna, an annual series of exhibition events held throughout the city on the occasion of Arte Fiera, and in 2022 he conceived Nuovo Forno del Pane, an interdisciplinary production center that transforms the spaces and function of the museum from an exhibition venue into a site of production and creative community.

A lecturer in Art Systems at DAMS, Università di Bologna, and in Contemporary Art and Visual Culture at Bologna Business School, he regularly gives lectures at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Bologna, IED in Florence and Turin, and other institutions of higher education. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, of the Collezione Farnesina, of the Board of Directors of Fondazione Lucio Saffaro, of the advisory board of the Fondazione Scuola Beni e Attività Culturali and of Luiss Business School, and is a full member of the Accademia Clementina.

In 2024 he curated the 60th edition of the October Salon / Belgrade Biennale.

Over the years he has written for and collaborated with Flash Art, ATP Diary, Artribune, Exibart, Mousse Magazine, Arte e Critica, Il Giornale dell'Arte, and curated exhibitions and monographic projects by artists such as: Yuri Ancarani, Tino Sehgal, Gregor Schneider, Mika Rottenberg, Julian Charrière, Robert Kusmirowski, Ragnar Kjartansson, Ludovica Carbotta, Romeo Castellucci, Italo Zuffi, Cesare Pietroiusti, Aldo Giannotti, Jan Groover, Cécile B. Evans, Lynda Benglis, Guido Guidi, Antoni Muntadas, Nino Migliori, Emilio Isgrò, Vadim Zakharov, Susan Philipsz, Virgilio Sieni, John Giorno and Giorgio Morandi.