Background

Catherine David was born in 1954 in Paris, France.

Education

Catherine David studied Spanish and Portuguese literature, linguistics and art history at Sorbonne University and the École du Louvre in Paris.

Career

Catherine David was a curator at the National Museum of Modern Art (Musée National d'Art Moderne), Centre Pompidou, Paris from 1981 to 1990. While working there, she wrote "Gilberto Zorio" in 1986. Catherine David also worked as a professor of contemporary art at the Ecole du Louvre in Paris in 1989-1991.

From 1990 to 1994 she worked at the National Gallery of the Jeu de Paume (Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume), also in Paris, where she organized several solo and group exhibitions including: "Reinhard Mucha, Passages de l'image"; "Stan Douglas: Monodramas and Television Spots"; "Marcel Broodthaers"; "Hélio Oiticica"; "Eva Hesse"; "Jeff Wall and Chantal Ackerman: D'Est", among others.

From 1990 to 1993 she was also a professor of anthropology and aesthetics at Sorbonne University.

Catherine David also contributed to books, including "Art and Language" (1993); "Day after Day" (edited by Pier Paolo Calzolari, Canale, Pedrini, Persano, 1994); and "Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman’s D’Est" (1995).

In 1994 David was appointed artistic director of documenta X in Kassel, staged in the summer of 1997. She made headlines in the international art world with her original approach to documenta, where she brought her cross-sector discipline to the exhibition, inviting writers, sociologists and architects, as well as artists, to speak over the 100-day exhibition.

In 1999 she went on to curate the film and video program of the XXIV Biennial of São Paulo. The following year she organized "The State of Things" for the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. In 2002 she took over as Director of the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam where she remained until 2004.

Besides, over several years David was chief curator of the Musées de France (French Museum Board). She was also artistic director of the 2009 Lyon Biennale.

Turning her focus to the Middle East, David became Director of the long-term project "Contemporary Arab Representations" (Représentations Arabes Contemporaines) in 1998, an initiative presenting contemporary Middle East and Arab artists, first shown at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona.

In 2006, she staged the exhibition "The Iraqi Equation" in Berlin and Barcelona. In December 2007, she curated "DI / VISIONS. Culture and politics in the Middle East" at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, which aimed to break down the Western stereotype of Arab culture. In 2009 she organized a retrospective in honor of the Iranian photographer Bahman Jalali, again at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona and was artistic director of the first national presentation of the ADACH (Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage) at the Venice Biennale.

In addition, in March 2011 she organized Hassan Sharif's exhibition "Experiments & Objects 1979-2011" at the ADACH Exhibition hall in Abu Dhabi and launched the first monographic publication of the artist in Venice Biennale 2011.

In 2014 David curated "Unedited History, Iran 1960-2014" at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Earlier that year it was announced that David would return to Centre Pompidou with her appointment as the deputy director and head of global outreach for the National Museum of Modern Art (Musée National d'Art Moderne), replacing Catherine Grenier.

Currently, Catherine David lives and works in Paris.

Achievements

• Catherine David is best known as an outstanding art historian, curator and museum director. Her appointment as Documenta director made history, as she became both the first woman and the first French citizen to head the event.
  
  She is also well-known as the author of numerous articles and catalog essays.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Marwan 1962-1972

    (Published on the occasion of an exhibition at the Serralv...)

    1976
  • The Beauty of Gesture: The Invisible Keyboard of Piano and T'ai Chi

    (In this society in which the essential is generally consi...)

    1996
  • Wifredo Lam

    (One of the most important figures in global modernism, Cu...)

    1992
  • Gilberto Zorio 1986
  • La beauté du geste 1994
  • L'Océan miniature 1983
  • L'Epoque, la mode, la morale, la passion: Aspects de l'art d'aujourd'hui, 1977-1987 1987
  • Collection F - Classe multi-niveaux et pédagogie différenciée
  • Art & Language 1993

Views

In the 1990s, Catherine David took part to a worldwide movement with Okwui Enwezor, judging art according to natural disasters, migration policies and gender war.

Quotations: "I don’t agree with the notion of internationalism that centers on Europe and North America and includes one African artist and one Chinese artist like exotic fruit. We now know that modernism is not just a Ping-Pong game between cultural capitals like Paris, New York, Lon¬don and Berlin."

Membership

Catherine David is member of the advisory committee of the Saradar Collection, devoted to Lebanese art from the contemporary and modern periods.

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series