Daniel Birnbaum is a Swedish art curator and an art critic. Since 2019, he has been director and curator of Acute Art in London, UK.

Education

Birnbaum studied at Stockholm University,

Freie Universität Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

in Germany and

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in New York. In 1998, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at Stockholm University.Natalia Rachlin (June 12, 2012)
In Stockholm, Stretching a Museum's Boundaries
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

''.

Career

Birnbaum has been the curator of institutions and exhibitions in many countries, for which he has produced catalogue entries. * In 1998, Birnbaum became director of Sweden's International Artists Studio Program (IASPIS), a position he held until 2000. * In 1998, he was co-curator of the 1st in Moss, Norway, with and Atle Gerhardsen. * Between 2001 and 2010, he held the position of Rector at the

Städelschule The Städelschule (), Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste, is a tertiary school of art in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It accepts about 20 students each year from 500 applicants, and has a total of approximately 150 students of visual a ...

fine arts academy in

Frankfurt am Main Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

in Germany. During that time, he also served as director of

Portikus Portikus is an exhibition hall for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main, that was founded in 1987 by Kasper König. The museum is part of the Museumsufer. Portikus presents the work of internationally renowned artists, and exhibits younger, emer ...

, an exhibition space at the Städelschule since 1987. * From 2002 to 2009, he was a member of the board of the Manifesta biennale in Amsterdam. * In 2003, he was co-curator of the international section of the 50th Venice Biennale. * From 2004 to 2007, he was associate curator of the exhibition space in Stockholm. * In 2005, he was co-curator of the 1st

Moscow Biennale The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is one of the most important Russian cultural events and was founded in 2003. First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art The First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (January 28 – February 28, 2005) ca ...

. * From 2006 to 2008, he was co-curator of ''Uncertain States of America'' with

Hans Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

and Gunnar B. Kvaran at CCS Bard College, the Serpentine Gallery, the 2nd

, the Rudolfinum Galerie, and the Astrup Fearnley Museum, among other locations. * In 2007, he was co-curator of ''Airs de Paris'' with Christine Macel at the

Centre Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the Centre national d'art et de culture Georges-Pompidou ( en, National Georges Pompidou Centre of Art and Culture), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English, is a complex building in the Beaubourg area of ...

. * In 2008, he was co-curator of the 3rd with Hu Fang, Akiko Miyake,

Hans-Ulrich Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist (born 1968) is a Swiss art curator, critic, and historian of art. He is artistic director at the Serpentine Galleries, London. Obrist is the author of ''The Interview Project'', an extensive ongoing project of interviews. He is ...

, and

Beatrix Ruf Beatrix Ruf (born 1960, Singen, Germany) is a German art curator and art advisor who held the position of director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam between November 2014 and October 2017. Formerly she was director of the Kunsthalle Zurich. She i ...

, and curator of the 2nd Torino Triennale, ''50 Moons of Saturn''. He was also a member of the

Turner Prize The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...

jury. * In 2009, he was the artistic director of the 53rd Venice Biennale. * In 2010, Birnbaum served on the jury for the first Future Generation Art Prize. * From 2010 to 2018, Birnbaum was the director of

Moderna Museet Moderna Museet ("the Museum of Modern Art"), Stockholm, Sweden, is a state museum for modern and contemporary art located on the island of Skeppsholmen in central Stockholm, opened in 1958. In 2009, the museum opened a new branch in Malmö i ...

, the museum of modern art in Stockholm. In 2018, he announced that he would leave his post to head up Acute Art, a company with an interest in creating virtual-reality and augmented-reality works in collaboration with artists. * Birnbaum was the co-curator of ''Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen'' with Emma Enderby at the

Serpentine Galleries The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

in 2016 and of ''Hilma af Klint: Possible Worlds'' with Jochen Volz at the Pinacoteca in São Paulo in 2018. He has been an adjunct board member of the Hilma Af Klint Foundation since 2017.

Publications

While in New York in the 1990s, Birnbaum began to write for ''

Artforum ''Artforum'' is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ x 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notabl ...

'' and subsequently became a contributing editor. He also published articles in other international art magazines such as ''

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

.'' He has written on artists

Olafur Eliasson Olafur Eliasson ( is, Ólafur Elíasson; born 5 February 1967) is an Icelandic–Danish artist known for sculptured and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer's ...

Pierre Huyghe Pierre Huyghe (born 11 September 1962) is a French artist who works in a variety of media from films and sculptures to public interventions and living systems. Education Pierre Huyghe (pronounced ''hweeg'') was born in Paris in 1962. He lives ...

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (born 30 June 1965, in Strasbourg) is a French visual artist and educator. She is known for her work in video projection, photography, and art installations. She has worked in landscaping, design, and writing. "I alw ...

Wolfgang Tillmans Wolfgang Tillmans (born 16 August 1968) is a German photographer. His diverse body of work is distinguished by observation of his surroundings and an ongoing investigation of the photographic medium’s foundations. Tillmans was the first photog ...

Cerith Wyn Evans Cerith Wyn Evans (born 1958 in Llanelli) is a Welsh conceptual artist, sculptor and film-maker. In 2018 he won the £30,000 Hepworth Prize for Sculpture. Early life and education The son of Sulwyn and Myfanwy Evans, Evans was born in Llanelli. ...

and Paul Chan. He has produced academic texts and translations on Novalis,

Edmund Husserl , thesis1_title = Beiträge zur Variationsrechnung (Contributions to the Calculus of Variations) , thesis1_url = https://fedora.phaidra.univie.ac.at/fedora/get/o:58535/bdef:Book/view , thesis1_year = 1883 , thesis2_title ...

, Martin Heidegger, Gottlob Frege,

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...

, Jacques Derrida,

Thomas Bernhard Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard (; 9 February 1931 – 12 February 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet who explored death, social injustice, and human misery in controversial literature that was deeply pessimistic about modern civilizat ...

, and

Jean-François Lyotard Jean-François Lyotard (; ; ; 10 August 1924 – 21 April 1998) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and literary theorist. His interdisciplinary discourse spans such topics as epistemology and communication, the human body, modern art and ...

: * Daniel Birnbaum, ''The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology'', Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1998, 200 p., . A new edition was published ten years later: Daniel Birnbaum, ''The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology'', Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008, 278 p., * Heike Belzer and Daniel Birnbaum, eds., ''Kunst Lehren – Teaching Art: Städelschule Frankfurt/Main'', Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007, 376 p., English / German, * Daniel Birnbaum and , eds., ''Under Pressure: Pictures, Subjects, and the New Spirit of Capitalism'', Institut für Kunstkritik series, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008, 96 p., * Daniel Birnbaum and , ''Spacing Philosophy: Lyotard and the Idea of the Exhibition'', Institut für Kunstkritik series, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019, 252 p.,

References

Bibliography

La Biennale di Venezia - Daniel Birnbaum

Texts and curated projects by Daniel Birnbaum
at

museum in progress museum in progress is a private art association based in Vienna. The non-profit art initiative was created in 1990 by Kathrin Messner and Josef Ortner († 2009) with the aim to develop new presentation forms for contemporary art. The projects ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Birnbaum, Daniel Swedish art curators Stockholm University alumni 1963 births Living people Directors of museums in the United Kingdom Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Venice Biennale artistic directors