Amanda Pinatih is an art historian, curator and PhD candidate. As Curator Design and Contemporary Art at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, she brings new perspectives to the museum’s vast collection. Her experimental working method is driven by an interest in developing new formats for knowledge transfer, while her exhibitions and projects explore the intersections of social, political, (de)colonial, environmental and economic issues. This year she also serves as the Curator of the Dutch Pavilion for the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Simultaneously as a PhD candidate at the VU Amsterdam, Pinatih is researching the affordances of Indonesian objects around social and political contestations of belonging for diasporic communities with roots in the Indonesian archipelago, both in the museum, at home and in artistic practice. She studies how contemporary artists from the diaspora reactivate such objects to commemorate, mourn or celebrate their state of “in-betweenness.
She is also co-founder of the Design Museum Dharavi in Mumbai (IN), the first museum of its kind, that was based in the homegrown neighbourhood of Dharavi. It showcased local talent through a nomadic exhibition space and employed design as a tool to promote social change and innovation on a global scale. In addition, the museum was constantly challenging the boundaries of what a museum can be.
Pinatih is member of the supervisory board of the Research School Art History.
Selected exhibitions:
– SIDELINED: A Space to Rethink Togetherness, the Dutch contribution to the 19th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia, 2025
– Oltre Terra – Formafantasma, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2025
– Unravel: the Power and politics of Textiles in Art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in collaboration with The Barbican Center London, 2024
– Prix de Rome, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2023
– When Things Are Beings, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2022
– It’s Our F***ing Backyard, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2022
– Let Textiles Talk, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 2021
– One Square Meter Berber, 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Palais Bahia, Marrakech, Morocco, 2020
– Design Museum Dharavi, Broken Nature, Triennale Milan, Italy, 2019
– HOW&WOW – cooperazione!, CCNL, Salone del Mobile, Milan, Italy, 2018
– HOW&WOW, CCNL, Dutch Design Week, Eindhoven,
The Netherlands, 2017
– Design Museum Dharavi, Mumbai, India, 2016