Beatrice Leanza, director of the Cantonal Museum of Design and Contemporary Applied Arts (MUDAC), who took office on January 1, 2023, will not go beyond her trial period. In a brief press release dated July 4, the Platform 10 Foundation, which brings together three cantonal Vaudois museums on the site of the new Quartier des Arts in Lausanne, justified its decision not to continue its collaboration due to “strategic differences” observed by Platform 10.
The art historian therefore leaves the museum after only six months in office. However, she had been elected unanimously by the jury of Platform 10, seduced at the time by her international experience of institutions centered on the applied arts.
Born in Milan in 1978, Beatrice Leanza led the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT) in Lisbon between 2019 and 2021, after leading Beijing Design Week between 2013 and 2016. During her seventeen years in China, the graduate of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice was also curator of the China Art Archives and Warehouse, a gallery founded by visual artist Ai Weiwei.
She succeeded Chantal Prod’Hom, who retired after more than twenty years at the head of Mudac. It is Marco Costantini, deputy to Beatrice Leanza and the former director of Mudac, who has taken over the interim management since Friday, June 30. “He will ensure the implementation of the rest of the program in serenity”said Patrick Gyger, director of Platform 10.
