Events — Dec 13, 2025

The annual Bathtub Lecture is a new tradition in which thinkers and creators reflect on current issues in the art world. This year, writer, curator and journalist Ekow Eshun will speak. In his lecture, he will explore how artists and art institutions can remain resilient and amplify diverse perspectives and practices amid growing global political pressures against inclusion in the arts.

Price
Valid museumticket + €3,-
Location
Auditorium
Time
Dec 13, 3 pm until 6 pm
Main language
English
Admission
Tickets

Program

In a time where political divides deepen, the climate crisis accelerates, and faith in progress falters, the role of art and cultural institutions becomes pressing. In the Realm of the Marvellous considers how artists and institutions might speak back to, and imaginatively thrive, against such a fraught backdrop.
Institutions founded on Enlightenment ideals of reason and order are being asked to rethink their purpose — to move beyond neutrality and engage with the emotional, poetic, and relational ways of knowing that artists so often embody. This is not about abandoning rigour but expanding it, making space for complexity, care, and imagination. Art reminds us that understanding the world also means feeling it, and that empathy can be a form of knowledge. The urgency lies here: in re-envisioning museums as living spaces of encounter and renewal, where we can collectively imagine more inclusive, sustainable, and marvelous futures into being.

Following the lecture, Malgorzata Ludwisiak will respond to Ekow Eshun from her perspective. Finally, Eshun and Ludwisiak will engage in a conversation with each other and the audience, moderated by curator Amanda Pinatih. After the program drinks will be served next to the Auditorium, providing the opportunity to continue the conversation informally.

About Ekow Eshun

Ekow Eshun is a distinguished curator, writer, and broadcaster, renowned for his multifaceted contributions to contemporary culture. Described by Vogue as “the most inspired - and inspiring - curator in Britain”, he has staged acclaimed exhibitions internationally and was awarded the Association for Art History’s Curatorial Prize 2023 for In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery, London, a groundbreaking exhibition of visionary Black artists exploring myth, Afrofuturism, and speculative fiction.  

A trailblazer in British culture, he made history as the first Black editor of a major UK magazine and also became the first Black director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. As Chairman of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, he leads one of the world’s most iconic public art projects. Eshun’s writing, featured in outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, and Vogue, reflects his expansive intellectual vision. 

He is the author of books including, most recently, The Strangers. longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and the Jhalak Prize, and Black Earth Rising: Colonialism and Climate Change in Contemporary Art.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was a judge for the Turner Prize 2024 and a member of the jury for the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024. 

About Malgorzata Ludwisiak

Art historian, art critic, curator, museum management expert, academic teacher. Curator of the Albanian Pavilion in Venice Biennal 2026. She has been a board member of CIMAM (International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art) for the second term (2023-2025). In 2023-2024 she was an Artistic Director in Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, co-responsible for the opening of the new museum venue in October 2024. As a director of Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw (2014-2019), she was looking for experimental institutional formats. She was a vice-director of the Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz (2008-2014), Chief Curator of Modern Art Department in National Museum in Gdansk, Poland (2021-22), director of the International Lodz Biennale (2006) and initiator and director of Lodz Design Festival (2007). Among other projects, she curated El Hadji Sy. At First I Thought I Was Dancing (2016, CCA in Warsaw) reflecting on questions of community and performativity seen through a lens of Dakar, and Correspondences. Modern Art and Universalism (co-curated with Jaroslaw Lubiak; 2012-13, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź), creating a dialogue between two collections of 20th and 21st century art: of Kunstmuseum Bern and Muzeum Sztuki in Lodz, applying Walter Benjamin’s notion of passages as a method for re-reading modernity and the very status of an art work.  

Since 2001 she has published critical texts in the exhibition catalogues, readers, Polish art magazines and a daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza; she is a member of the Polish section of AICA. She lectured on art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź (2007-2010), as well as on curatorial strategies at the University of Lodz and management in culture institutions at Academy of Art in Szczecin (2023-2024). In her theoretical texts she tries to look for a possible relationship between contemporary art and its social responsibility reflecting on a critical role of an art institution in this process.   

In the Realm of the Marvellous

Want to secure a spot? Book your ticket in advance here.

Credits

1. Portret Ekow Eshun, made by: Zeinab Batchelor
2. Portret Malgorzata Ludwisiak