Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome

In Spike's summer 2024 issue, The State of the Arts, we invited Daniel Baumann, art historian, critic and former long-time director of the Kunsthalle Zurich, to write on a vocation that, it turned out, he believes is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

After the digital republication of his print article struck a chord online, the magazine brought together a roundtable in November 2025, featuring Daniel himself, independent curator Övül Ö, Durmuşoğlu, who has worked with the Istanbul Biennial, Kunsthallevin and Documenta 13, among others, and Luca Lopinto, former artistic director of MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome.

Moderated by writer and editor Pablo Larios, they discussed what went wrong in the trajectory of a vocation that, not so long ago, was the darling of global art.

Good evening, everyone.

She lives in Berlin.

Welcome, Oval.

And to my left is Luca Lopinto, an Italian curator and editor who was the artistic director of MACRO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome, from 2020 to 2025.

And from 2014 to 2019, he worked as a curator of Kunsthalle Wien.