Education
Friese studied art history, archaeology and Philosophy at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Friese studied art history, archaeology and Philosophy at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
His professional life began 1975 at Kunstmuseum Bochum, 1978 at Museum Folkwang and 1980–1984 at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf. Since 1988 he has continued his curatorial work at Kunstverein Ruhr in Essen. In 1992 Peter Friese became curator at Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen and since 2007 he served as chief curator und deputy director
In 2015 he became the museum"s director
Since 1994 he lectures on art history and cultural sciences at Bremen University. As artistic director of the Kunstverein Ruhr he curated a great number of one-person exhibitions, among others with Werner Ruhnau, Gary Hill, Virginia Wölfl, Christian Boltanski, Ingo Günther Lawrence Weiner, Terry Fox, Timm Ulrichs, Gerhard Richter, Anna und Bernhard Blume, and Tony Cragg.
As chief curator of Neuen Museums Weserburg Bremen he conceptualized and realized his most successful exhibition project “MINIMAL MAXIMAL” (1998-1999), covering Minimal Art and its impact on contemporary art of the 1990s. The exhibition travelled to Santiago de Compostela, Spain Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea and in 2001 to Japan to three museums: the Chiba City Museum of Art, Japan, MoMAK, National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto and the Fukuoka City Museum of Art, Fukuoka, Japan.
In 2002 the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Seoul showed the exhibition.
The catalog was published and translated into five languages. Other seminal exhibition projects, all of them originating at the Weserburg museum, include “Kunst nach Kunst” (Art After Art), “After Images”, 2004 “Farbe im Fluss" (Color in Flux)”, 2001. “Ohne Zögern (Without Hesitation)” und 2008 bis 2010 “Go for it!” (Collection Olbricht).
"Say it isn"t so", 2007.