Daniel Birnbaum

Professor Daniel Birnbaum, born in 1963 in Stockholm, has been director of Moderna Museet in Stockholm since November 1, 2010.

Following his studies of art history, philosophy and literature in the USA, Stockholm and Berlin he worked as an art critic, publisher and independent curator. From 1996 to 1998 he was a lecturer of art theory at the University College of Art, Craft and Design in Stockholm. In 1998, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at the Stockholm university and became director of the renowned Swedish “International Artists Studio Program” (IASPIS), a position he held well into the year 2000. In addition to articles published in international art magazines such as Artforum and Frieze, Birnbaum also produced a series of academic texts and translations on Novalis, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida and Thomas Bernhard.

From 2000 to 2010 Birnbaum had a position at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, which currently has one of the most distinguished international reputations among the German art academies. He has been involved in several Biennials in recent years, as a committee member of the International Foundation Manifesta in 2002, for example, and as co-curator of the 1st Moscow biennial of contemporary art. The so -called ‘Neue Portikus’, of which Birnbaum was director, was re-opened in a converted new space in 2006 on the Main-island in Frankfurt, under the curatorial directorship of Nikola Dietrich.