Daniel Birnbaum

Early life and education Birnbaum studied at Stockholm University, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Columbia University in New York. In 1998, he completed his doctorate in philosophy at Stockholm University.

Career Early beginnings Birnbaum has been the curator of institutions and exhibitions in many countries, for which he has produced catalogue entries. In 1998, he became director of Sweden's International Artists Studio Program (IASPIS), a position he held until 2000. During that time, he was also a co-curator of the 1st in Moss, Norway, in 1998, with and Atle Gerhardsen.

Städelschule, 2001–2010 Between 2001 and 2010, Birnbaum 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 2007, he was co-curator of Airs de Paris with Christine Macel at the Centre Pompidou. In 2008, he was co-curator of the 3rd with Hu Fang, Akiko Miyake, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Beatrix Ruf, and curator of the 2nd Torino Triennale, 50 Moons of Saturn. In 2009, he was the artistic director of the 53rd Venice Biennale.

Moderna Museet, 2010–2018 From 2010 to 2018, Birnbaum served as the director of Moderna Museet, the museum of modern art in Stockholm.

In 2015, Birnbaum chaired the jury that awarded the Museum Ludwig's Wolfgang Hahn Prize to Michael Krebber and R. H. Quaytman.

Birnbaum was the co-curator of Hilma af Klint: Painting the Unseen with Emma Enderby at the Serpentine Galleries in 2016 and of Hilma af Klint: Possible Worlds with Jochen Volz at the Pinacoteca in São Paulo in 2018. He has been an adjunct board member of the Hilma Af Klint Foundation since 2017.

Later career In 2018, Birnbaum announced that he would leave his post to head up Acute Art, a company with an interest in creating virtual-reality and augmented-reality works in collaboration with artists.

Publications While in New York in the 1990s, Birnbaum began to write for Artforum and subsequently became a contributing editor. A new edition was published ten years later: Daniel Birnbaum, The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008, 278 p., Heike Belzer and Daniel Birnbaum, eds., Kunst Lehren – Teaching Art: Städelschule Frankfurt/Main, Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2007, 376 p., English / German, Daniel Birnbaum and , eds., Under Pressure: Pictures, Subjects, and the New Spirit of Capitalism, Institut für Kunstkritik series, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2008, 96 p., Daniel Birnbaum and , Spacing Philosophy: Lyotard and the Idea of the Exhibition, Institut für Kunstkritik series, Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2019, 252 p.,