Chris Dercon is an art historian, curator and museum director. He was born in Lier, Belgium, in 1958. He studied Art History and Theatre Studies at the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden, and Film Studies at the Vrije Unversiteit in Amsterdam. Chris Dercon has worked as a teacher, critic and journalist. He has been managing cultural institutions since 1988. He began his career as program director of PS1 New York in 1988, and in Rotterdam from 1990 to 1995 he directed the Witte de With (Melly Kunsinstituut), then the Boijmans van Beuningen from 1996 to 2002. From 2003 to 2011, he directed the Haus der Kunst in Munich. From 2011 to 2016, he directed the Tate Modern in London. From 2017 to 2018, he directed the Volksbuhne Theater in Berlin. From 2019 to 2023, he is Chairman of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux and the Grand Palais. Since June 2023, he has been Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain.

A regular participant in various juries for different disciplines, he has notably taken part in the DAAD Künstlerprogramm from 1994 to 1997, then in 2009 and 2010 in Berlin, the CCAA’s Uli Sigg Prize in Beijing from 2005 to 2016, the Prix de Rome in Amsterdam in 2006-200, 7 in the selection of the English Pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2013 and the French Pavilion in 2017, the Documenta 13 jury, the Friedrich Kiesler Prize in Vienna in 2014, the Yanghyun Art Prize in Seoul from 2014 to 2016, the Bettencourt Prize in Paris in 2019, the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2020, and the Eye Art and Film Prize of the EYEMuseum in Amsterdam since 2022.