Catherine David
Catherine David (born September 19, 1954) is a French art historian, curator and museum director. She studied languages and art history at the Sorbonne and the École du Louvre in Paris. She worked as a curator at the Centre Pompidou from 1981 to 1990, then at the Jeu de Paume from 1990 to 1994.
In 1994 she was chosen to lead documenta X in Kassel, Germany, which ran in 1997. She was the first woman and the first non‑German speaker to curate the show. She brought a cross‑disciplinary approach and invited writers, sociologists and architects to contribute, and the exhibition even included a website.
After documenta X, she curated at the São Paulo Biennial in 1999 and led projects at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. She directed Witte de With in Rotterdam from 2002 to 2004, taught at Humboldt University, and was a fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg. She also served as chief curator for the French Museums Board and directed the 2009 Lyon Biennale. David launched long‑term projects on contemporary Arab art, including Contemporary Arab Representations (starting in 1998), and organized exhibitions such as The Iraqi Equation (2006) and DI/VISIONS (2007).
In 2011 she organized Hassan Sharif’s exhibition in Abu Dhabi and helped publish his work in Venice. In 2014 she returned to Centre Pompidou as deputy director and head of global outreach for the National Museum of Modern Art. In 2016 she curated Reframing Modernism, a major Paris‑Singapore collaboration. She has served on advisory committees for MACBA in Barcelona and the Saradar Collection in Beirut, and she joined discussions in 2018 about museum leadership in Ghent.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 18:05 (CET).