Nico Anklam

Recklinghausen

Dr Nico Anklam is a German curator and museum director. He studied art history, cultural studies, and aesthetics in London, Berlin, Greifswald and New York as a Fulbright Scholar. 

His academic research focuses on nineteenth-century Nordic art, with particular attention to questions of national identity, colonial visual culture, and transnational artistic exchange.

Anklam has held curatorial and teaching positions across Europe, including at the Kunsthal 44 Møen in Denmark, the Rietveld Pavilion in the Netherlands, Humboldt University of Berlin, the Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø, and the Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn. He has curated exhibitions and research projects in Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Estonia, Sweden, and has written on modern and contemporary art, particularly on conceptual art, and Fluxus. 

He currently serves as Director of the Municipal Museums of Recklinghausen and Head of the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, where he is committed to presenting internationally relevant contemporary art while strengthening the museum’s role as an accessible cultural institution for diverse audiences. In this role he is also responsible for Germany‘s oldest communal art prize after WWII, the „junger westen“.

His most recent exhibition projects have brought the first comprehensive overview shows to German of Judy Chicago in collaboration with Serpentine London (2025), and the first solo exhibition of Belgian artist Marianne Berenhaut (2023) both at Kunsthalle Recklinghausen.