Center for Contemporary Arts CSU

Maximilian Lehner is a curator, critic, and art historian who emphasizes horizontal work structures and conceives of art and curating as epistemological forms to understand critical temporalities and the non-normative. Since 2025, he has served as managing director for the European network of cultural journals Eurozine, and co-founded The Real Office, a production agency for visual arts, in 2016 in Stuttgart. He curated public programs for Secession (Vienna, AT) in 2026, Kunstmuseum Moritzburg (Halle/Saale, GER) in 2025, and International Summer Academy of Fine Arts Salzburg (AT) in 2023, as well as exhibitions, among others, for Prospect Art (Los Angeles, USA), Salzburger Kunstverein (Salzburg, AT), aqb (Budapest, HU), Škuc Gallery (Ljubljana, SI), Nova BAZA (Zagreb, HR), and ElectroPutere (Bucharest, RO). In addition to academic publications and artist books, Maximilian’s writing has appeared in magazines such as Camera Austria, MOST Magazine, Parnass, Artforum, RevistaArta, and VOGUE Adria. He received the Upper Austria Talent Award in Culture and Humanities in 2025 and was selected as a Critic-in-Residence at the Igor Zabel Association for Culture and Theory in 2022. He studied art theory and philosophy in Paris, Stuttgart, and Linz, and at CuratorLab at Konstfack Stockholm.