Chris Dercon

Chris Dercon is a Belgian art historian, curator, and museum director born in Lier in Belgium. He studied at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in History of Art, Theatre Research and Film Theory at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Dercon began his career as a teaching assistant at Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in the Department of Theatre Research where he initiated the Theatre Tape Festival. In 1980 he worked as an assistant curator at the Gemeentemuseum The Hague on a project about the history of world exhibitions and textiles. Starting in 1981 till 1983 he was a collaborator at the Galerie Baronian-Lambert in Ghent. As of 1982, he worked as a freelance art critic for the De Standaard newspaper, and as a freelance collaborator for Belgian Radio and Television, both in Brussels. From 1983 onwards, he also began teaching video and cinema at the KU Leuven, and at the Hoger Instituut voor Beeldende Kunsten, Sint-Lukas Brussels. In 1988 he was appointed program director at PS1 in New York where he worked until 1990.

Dercon was then appointed to his first directorship at Witte de With in Rotterdam, where he worked until 1995. In 1995, he curated the exhibition at the Dutch pavilion during the that year's Venice Biennale, featuring Marlene Dumas, Maria Roosen and Marijke van Warmerdam. From 1996 to 2003 he served as director of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

From 2003 to 2011 Dercon served as the director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich. In his first year, he notably invited Ydessa Hendeles to co-curate Partners, combining work by Diane Arbus, Maurizio Cattelan, James Coleman, Hanne Darboven, Walker Evans, Luciano Fabro, On Kawara, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Giulio Paolini, Jeff Wall and Lawrence Weiner with Hendeles's own artwork Partners (The Teddy Bear Project) (2002), a large-scale installation built around an archive of family-album photographs, each including the image of a teddy bear.

Dercon was appointed director of the Tate Modern in London in 2011 where he stayed until 2016. In his position as Tate Modern director, he succeeded Vicente Todolí and was second in ranking to Nicholas Serota. During his tenure, he oversaw the opening of the museum's first dedicated space to live art and installations as part of plans to explore new areas of visual culture like video, photography and performance art.

Nominated by Berlin's State Secretary for Cultural Affairs Tim Renner in 2015, Dercon was appointed general director of the Volksbühne Berlin from 2017 until 2018, succeeding Frank Castorf. His first season began with a wide variety of productions including a 10-hour dance event in which the audience were asked to join in, and an installation by filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Since 2019 Dercon has been the president of the Association of French National Museums-Grand Palais for an initial five-year term, where he is overseeing the renovation of the Grand Palais.

As a museum director, Dercon has worked and published extensively on the future of museums, working with renowned architects Rem Koolhaas, Robbrecht en Daem, Herzog and De Meuron, Gunther Vogt and Francis Kéré. In Paris, he is working with Francois Chatillon on the renovation of the Grand Palais set to be completed in 2024.