Philippe Pirotte

Philippe Pirotte (b.1972 in Antwerp, BE), Adjunct Senior Curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA),  is also affiliated with the Städelschule Frankfurt where he serves as Professor Art History and Curatorial Studies. Currently Philippe Pirotte is a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts fellowship to conduct research in preparation for a major exhibition-project, to be held at BAMPFA, focusing on cultural and artistic developments in relation to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. He also serves on the Documenta-Commission (2019-2022), which selected ruangrupa as the artistic direction of documenta fifteen (2022). 
 
Pirotte held the position of rector of the Städelschule and director of kunsthalle Portikus between 2014–2020, where he organized exhibitions with John Torres & Shireen Seno, Frida Orupabo, Leo Asemoto & Nástio Mosquito, Arin Rungjang, Candice Lin, Marina Rosenfeld, Ade Darmawan, Otobong Nkanga, and Meyer Vaisman, amongst others. Prior to this, he co-founded the Antwerp contemporary art center objectif (1999), and from 2005-2011 he took on the directorship of Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland. Since 2013 Pirotte is an advisor to the Kadist art foundation. 
 
From 2004 to 2013, Philippe Pirotte was Senior Advisor at the Rijksakademie for Visual Arts in Amsterdam, and from 2018-19 he served as visiting professor curatorial studies at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is the co-founder, with Gesyada Siregar, MG Pringgotono and Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh of Kelas Bareng/ Joint Class, a collaborative educational initiative between Gudskul (Indonesia), Städelschule (Germany), and blaxTARLINES KUMASI (KNUST, Ghana). 
 
Recently Philippe Pirotte curated Enigma59: Roman by Bili Bidjocka for Savvy Contemporary, Berlin; Pierre Verger in Suriname, a project by Willem de Rooij for Portikus, and the group show Arus Balik. From Below the Wind to Above the Wind and Back Again for the Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (2019). He was member of the curatorial team of the Jakarta Biennale in Indonesia in 2017 led by artistic director Melati Suryodarmo, and was artistic director of the 2016 edition of La Biennale de Montréal, Canada. As an independent curator he co-organized (with Clémentine Deliss and Yvette Mutumba) El Hadji Sy: Painting, Performance, Politics for the Weltkulturenmuseum Frankfurt (2015).