Philippe Pirotte is Adjunct Senior Curator at the University of California Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA). He also serves on the Documenta Commission (2019-2022), which selected ruangrupa as the artistic direction of documenta fifteen (2022). Pirotte held the position of rector of the Städelschule and director of kunsthalle Portikus between 2014–2020. Prior to this, he co-founded the Antwerp contemporary art center objectif (1999), and from 2005-2011 he took on the directorship of Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland. From 2004 to 2013, Philippe Pirotte was Senior Advisor at the Rijksakademie for Visual Arts in Amsterdam, and from 2018-19 he served as visiting professor curatorial studies at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Most recently Philippe Pirotte curated the Samdani Art Award exhibition for the 2020 Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh, and the group show Arus Balik. From Below the Wind to Above the Wind and Back Again for the Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (2019). He was member of the curatorial team of the Jakarta Biennale in 2017, and was artistic director of the 2016 edition of La Biennale de Montréal, Canada. 

Philippe Pirotte is editor of several books and authored essays and contributions to catalogues on modern and contemporary art. Most recently he edited an anthology of writings by artist Hassan Khan, and he oversaw the publication of Städelschule Lectures#1. As a regular lecturer he recently presented a.o. at: the international forum Tense Switching: Non-Aligned Movement, Third Worldism and Asian Art (Asia Culture Centre in Gwangju - South-Korea, December 2018); the symposium Postcolonial Perspectives from the South (Goethe Institute Jakarta – Indonesia, January 2019); and the conference Considering Monoculture (organized by l’Internationale, MuHKA and Vanabbemuseum, February 2020). 

Currently Philippe Pirotte is a recipient of an Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts fellowship to conduct research in preparation for a major exhibition-project, to be held at BAMPFA, focusing on cultural and artistic developments in relation to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung, Indonesia. Note: Philippe Pirotte is on leave from his professorship at the Städelschule in the winter semester 2022/23 and summer semester 2023.

Note: Philippe Pirotte is on leave of absence from his professorship at the Städelschule in the winter semester 2022/23 and summer semester 2023.