A selection of projects initiated, developed and curated by Liv Vaisberg Office across contemporary collectible design and art.
COLLECTIBLE
The leading international fair dedicated exclusively to 21st-century collectible design. Founded in Brussels in 2018, COLLECTIBLE has helped define and advance the field through a rigorous curatorial framework, international outlook and strong artistic direction. Across nine editions in Brussels and a third New York edition in 2026, the fair has grown into a major international platform, occupying six floors of the landmark Vanderborght Building in Brussels and 35,000 sq ft in Lower Manhattan. Bringing together galleries, designers, collectors, institutions, architects and cultural leaders, each edition combines ambitious presentations, commissions and collaborations with sustained commercial exchange. Its expansion across Europe and the United States demonstrates the ability to translate a distinctive cultural vision across cities and markets. Internationally acclaimed, COLLECTIBLE has been described by the Financial Times as “a firm fixture in the calendar” while Architectural Digest positioned it as the fair where “the best of contemporary design convenes.”
DESIGN BIENNALE ROTTERDAM
A city-wide biennale exploring the role of contemporary design through exhibitions, public programming and critical discourse. Initiated and co-founded by Liv Vaisberg, Design Biennale Rotterdam was developed to position the city as a leading centre for contemporary design while fostering dialogue between local communities and international practitioners. Its inaugural edition brought together more than 250 designers across 19 venues, transforming museums, galleries and unexpected urban spaces throughout Rotterdam into a connected cultural programme. Welcoming 5,500 visitors, the biennale attracted an international audience of curators, collectors, institutions and design professionals while creating new encounters between the city and its creative communities. It received widespread coverage in NRC, Monocle, Dezeen and Wallpaper*, which described Rotterdam’s transformation from “underdog to design capital,” establishing the biennale as a significant new platform for contemporary design and cultural exchange.
HUIDENCLUB
Established through the temporary transformation of a 2,000 sqm former tannery in Rotterdam, Huidenclub became an experimental platform bringing together contemporary art, design and public programming within a single curatorial vision. Its architectural conversion, designed by Atelier Tomas Dirrix, combined exhibition and performance spaces with artists’ studios, workspaces, a café and an art and design bookshop, forming an active creative ecosystem. Through exhibitions, commissions, performances, talks and screenings, Huidenclub presented emerging practitioners alongside internationally recognised artists and designers, including Laure Prouvost, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Sabine Marcelis, Laurids Gallée, Richard Hutten, Bertjan Pot, Atelier Van Lieshout, Agnieszka Kurant and Marjolijn Dijkman, while collaborating with figures such as Centre Pompidou curator Olivier Zeitoun and artist Leo Orta. Over five years, it fostered exchange between disciplines, independent initiatives and cultural institutions, establishing itself as one of Rotterdam’s most vibrant and forward-looking platforms for contemporary culture.
A PERFORMANCE AFFAIR
A pioneering platform dedicated to performance art and the economic structures surrounding its presentation, acquisition and preservation. Created to explore new models for exhibiting, collecting and sustaining live artistic practices, A Performance Affair brought together artists, galleries, collectors, curators and institutions through a programme of performances, discussions and experimental formats. Its selection committee included gallerists Ellen de Bruijne and Michel Rein, collectors Josée and Marc Gensollen and Frédéric de Goldschmidt, and curators Eva Wittockx of Museum M and Catherine Wood of Tate. A dedicated publication invited participating artists to articulate the protocols, scores and conditions governing the transmission and re-performance of their works, shifting the focus from ephemerality to collectability and long-term stewardship. By addressing the unique challenges of performance-based work, the initiative contributed to expanding its visibility, acquisition and place within the international contemporary art landscape.
FORWARD FURNITURE x DUTCH DESIGN WEEK
Forward Furniture is a large-scale exhibition dedicated to contemporary furniture design developed in collaboration with Dutch Design Week. Conceived in response to the growing absence of furniture within the Dutch Design Week landscape, it introduced a new curatorial format centred on collection-based practices, requiring participants to present a minimum of three pieces in order to showcase coherent bodies of work rather than individual objects. Bringing together more than 90 designers across a 2,000 sqm industrial venue, the inaugural edition created new opportunities for emerging and established practitioners while laying the foundations for an international platform dedicated to contemporary furniture design.
MAISON & OBJET INTERIOR, HONG KONG 2025
Commissioned by Maison&Objet, this large-scale exhibition explored contemporary collectible design through a dialogue between Asia and Europe. Co-curated with Clélie Debehault and presented within the Maison&Objet Design Factory programme, the exhibition brought together an international selection of designers whose practices navigate questions of cultural exchange, identity, diaspora, and perception. Developed in close collaboration with scenographer Ann Chan (HERO Design), the exhibition drew on the spatial logic of an Asian domestic setting to examine how objects, narratives, and traditions are translated across cultures. Following the exhibition, Liv Vaisberg was invited to join the advisory board of the Maison&Objet Design Factory programme.
FOKUS: ORNAMENT - VIENNA DESIGN WEEK
Invited as the inaugural guest curator of FOKUS, a new exhibition format launched by Vienna Design Week, Liv Vaisberg conceived the first edition around the theme Ornament. Bringing together an international selection of designers, including Laurids Gallée, Stefan Sagmeister (with J. & L. LOBMEYR), Atelier Duyi Han, Kurina Sohn, Sophia Taillet and Tadeáš Podracký, the exhibition reconsidered ornament not as decoration but as a cultural, political and expressive language, drawing on Vienna's unique legacy at the intersection of Jugendstil, Modernism and contemporary design. Presented through a specially commissioned scenography by Easy-Center, the exhibition demonstrated how singular design objects can communicate ideas beyond function, positioning contemporary design as a vehicle for narrative, identity and cultural reflection.
CUPS
CUPS is an exhibition co-curated by Liv Vaisberg Office and TABLEAU for 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen. Conceived to celebrate Café Sommersko’s 50th anniversary, the project brought together 30 international designers and artists, including Richard Hutten, Sophie Dries, Lea Colombo, Ia Kutateladze and Odd Matter Studio. Each created a coffee cup specifically for the exhibition, produced in an edition of 20. Opened in 1976, Sommersko was the first Parisian-inspired café in the Nordic region and introduced a new café culture to Copenhagen. Extending beyond the exhibition, the project also gave rise to a public conversation with Sophie Dries exploring collectible design, hospitality and contemporary design.
INTERSTICES
An exhibition exploring how designers with hybrid and transnational identities are reshaping contemporary collectible design. Bringing together an international selection of practices operating across cultures, the exhibition examined how personal histories, heritage, migration, and lived experience inform objects that move beyond function to become carriers of narrative, memory, and cultural expression. Positioned at the intersection of design, identity, and belonging, INTERSTICES highlighted emerging perspectives that challenge conventional readings of contemporary design. Featuring works by: dach&zephir (FR), Ciro Duclos (NL), Alan Hernández (MX), Marcos Kueh (MY) × Ritvik Khushu (IND) × Funda Baysal (TR), Jirah Joshua × Sibling Studios (US/UK), Kalo Rakoto (BE), SaI.E STUDIO (KR), and Giles Tettey Nartey (UK).
DUTCH VACATION
An exhibition examining contemporary notions of Dutch design and the evolving identity of the Dutch designer. Bringing together established figures including Richard Hutten, Joep van Lieshout, Sabine Marcelis, and Laurids Gallée alongside emerging graduates and long-term Netherlands-based practitioners, the exhibition questioned national identity as a fixed category. Through a dialogue between generations, backgrounds, and practices, DUTCH VACATION explored how Dutch design continues to be shaped by migration, international exchange, and changing cultural perspectives.
CRUISING: DISCOMFORT AS A TOOL TO DEPATRIARCHISE DESIGN
An exhibition examining contemporary notions of Dutch design and the evolving identity of the Dutch designer. Bringing together established figures including Richard Hutten, Joep van Lieshout, Sabine Marcelis, and Laurids Gallée alongside emerging graduates and long-term Netherlands-based practitioners, the exhibition questioned national identity as a fixed category. Through a dialogue between generations, backgrounds, and practices, DUTCH VACATION explored how Dutch design continues to be shaped by migration, international exchange, and changing cultural perspectives.
HOW THINGS END
Before closing permanently its doors, Huidenclub presents How Things End, a group exhibition bringing together artists and designers whose works reflect, each in their own way, on endings. Not only loss or mourning, but also transformation, disappearance, erosion, and the quiet cycles through which things pass and persist. From fragile ecosystems to personal mythologies, the works explore what it means for something to come to an end, and what remains afterwards.
With: Diana Al Halabi, Lara Almarcegui, Mario Sergio Alvarez, Crina Arghirescu, Léa Belooussovitch, Louis Braddock Clarke, Theo Colin, Jonat Deelstra,
Jonas Hejduk + Pauline Rip, Karin Kytökangas, Raquel Luaces, Katja Mater, Narges Mohammadi, Ginevra Petrozzi, Monty Richthofen, Elisa Verkoelen
WORKABLE
We are all far from equal in the eyes of the labour market. Huge portions of work carried out in spaces outside the realm of what is deemed valuable is rendered of little or no monetary value. Domestic labourers, art workers, migrants struggle to prove their financial worth while other white collar professions receive bloated wages for their bullshit jobs. WORKABLE encourages a critical examination of structures of labour. What is considered as work? How do we give real-world meaning to the fictitious construct of value, and how do we assign that value as a measure of the roles performed within spaces of work and non-work? What causes insecure labour relations and thus financial anxiety? WORKABLE activates the Huidenclub as a space for critical exploration of the structures of waged and unwaged labour, and the quantification of human and monetary value which underpin distributions of wealth and divisions of labour within society.
With: Apparatus 22 (RO/BE), Stefan Botez (RO), Jane Bustin (UK), Danilo Correale (IT), Saemundur Thor Helgason (IS), Ariane Loze (BE) and Adrian Melis (CU)
SHAKING THE HABITUAL
The show investigates different ways in which artists are creating and shaping new social norms. As an artist, how can you clear a path and make your voice heard within the current power structures driving gender and ecological justice?
With: Pauline Boudry + Renate Lorenz (CH/DE), Pauline Curnier Jardin (FR), Andrea Éva Györi (HU), Patricia Kaersenhout (NL), Janis Rafa (GR), Evelyn Taocheng Wang (CN), Jennifer Tee (NL) and Kubilay Mert Ural (TR)
OFFICE
Liv Vaisberg Office is an independent curatorial and artistic direction practice. The work spans long-term initiatives, exhibitions, and commissioned projects, including the curation and sourcing of contemporary collectible design for private residences, hospitality environments, and cultural contexts. Projects are developed independently and in collaboration, depending on context and scale.
BIO
Liv Vaisberg is a curator and cultural entrepreneur working internationally across contemporary collectible design and art. She is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of COLLECTIBLE and Initiator and Co-Founder of Design Biennale Rotterdam. Through Liv Vaisberg Office, she develops exhibitions, cultural platforms, and commissioned projects across Europe, the United States, and Asia. Her work engages with emerging and established practices, contributing to the development and visibility of contemporary collectible design and emerging art at an international level.
Liv Vaisberg Office
Nieuwe Binnenweg 356 A
3023 ES Rotterdam, The Netherlands
office@livvaisberg.com