Swiss curator Daniel Baumann will replace Beatrix Ruf as director of the Kunsthalle Zürich, the institution announced on Wednesday. Baumann currently serves as curator of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation at Bern’s Museum of Fine Arts but is better known for his independent curatorial projects. Those have included the much-praised Carnegie International 2013, which Roberta Smith called “a welcome shock to the system of one of the art world’s more entrenched rituals,” as well as a revelatory exhibition series he initiated in Tbilisi, Georgia. In 2008, he founded Basel’s adored independent exhibition space New Jerseyy with Tobias Madison, Emanuel, Rossetti, and Dan Solbach.

Ruf announced her departure from the Kunsthalle in April and will direct Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum beginning on November 1 (“Beatrix Ruf Named New Stedelijk Museum Director“). Ruf had served as the Kunsthalle’s director since 2001 and was responsible for its move to Zurich’s Löwenbräu art district in 2012. At the Stedelijk, she replaces Ann Goldstein who left the museum last December after only three years at institution.

Announcing Baumann’s appointment as director, Kunsthalle Zürich Association president Mark Reutter wrote:

Daniel Baumann is among the most innovative and widely respected curators, both in a national, as well as international environment. He has a profound knowledge of contemporary art, can build on a deep and fruitful experience of collaboration with artists and has a well established artistic and institutional experience.

According to the announcement, Baumann will begin at the Kunsthalle on a part-time basis in November before taking up the role fully on January 1, 2015.