Karen Den Berg Van

Karen van den Berg (b. 1963) is Professor for Art Theory and Curating at Zeppelin

University and academic director of the university’s arts program. Van

den Berg studied Art History, Classical Archeology and Nordic Philology in

Saarbrücken and Basel, where she received her doctorate with a study on

Matthias Grünewald. She has worked as a curator since 1988. Between 1993 and

2003 she served as a research fellow and lecturer at University Witten/Herdecke.

1994–96 she received the Max Imdahl Scholarship for Art Education.

She has undertaken visiting research and teaching at a number of significant

international institutions including: the Chinati Foundation in Marfa (Texas);

Bauhaus University Weimar; Parsons New School for Design in New York City;

and The Europäisches Kolleg Jena. She also served as a visiting scholar at the

Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford University and as a fellow at

IKKM in Weimar.

Her research focusses on: art and politics; socially engaged art; theory and

history of curating; museum studies; art market and studio research; museum

and educational architecture. Along with numerous publications within these

fields, she has written monographs and essays on artists and collectives such as:

Richard Serra; Joseph Beuys; Forensic Architecture; Korpys/Löffler; Rirkrit

Tiravanija; and the Center for Political Beauty. Her most important publications

include the volume: “The Art of Direct Action – Social Sculpture and Beyond”(co-

edited with Cara Jordan and Philipp Kleinmichel in 2019); “Art Production

beyond the Art Market?” (co-edited with Ursula Pasero, 2013) and the volume

“Politik des Zeigens” (2010), jointly edited with Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.

She is currently one of four Directors of Studies within the Innovative Training

Network "The Future of Independent Art Spaces in a Period of socially Engaged

Art (FEINART)," supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of Horizon

2020 (www.feinart.org).