Daniel Birnbaum


Daniel Birnbaum is a Swedish art critic. Since 2010, he has been director of the Moderna Museet, the museum of modern art in Stockholm.

Life and career

Birnbaum was born in Stockholm. He studied at Stockholm University, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Columbia University in New York. While in New York, Birnbaum also began to write for Artforum. In 1998, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at Stockholm University.
Also in 1998, Birnbaum became director of Sweden's International Artists Studio Program, a position he held until 2000. Between 2001 and 2010, he held the position of Rector at the Städelschule fine arts academy in Frankfurt am Main in Germany. During that time, he also served as director of Portikus, an exhibition space at the Städelschule since 1987. In 2008, he was a member of the Turner Prize jury.
Birnbaum has been the director of Moderna Museet since 2010. He is also currently an adjunct board member of the Hilma Af Klint Foundation and a contributing editor at Artforum. In 2018, he announced that he will leave his post to head up , a company with an interest in creating virtual-reality and augmented-reality works in collaboration with artists.

Publications

In 2007, Birnbaum published Teaching Art: Staedelschule Frankfurt am Main and has subsequently written on Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Wolfgang Tillmans, Cerith Wyn Evans and Paul Chan. His latest book is Under Pressure. In addition to articles published in international art magazines such as Artforum and frieze, he also produced a series of academic texts and translations on Novalis, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Gottlob Frege, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Jacques Derrida and Thomas Bernhard.

Curator career

While teaching, Birnbaum also pursued curatorial work. He was co-curator of the 50th Venice Biennale as well as the director of the 53rd Venice Biennale. He has been the curator of institutions and exhibitions in many countries, for which he has produced catalogue entries:
Birnbaum also serves on the jury for the first Future Generation Art Prize.