Klaus Biesenbach

As part of a 2021 reorganization, Biesenbach was later named artistic director, with a mandate to focus on setting the artistic vision for the museum, overseeing exhibitions and collections. Shortly after, Johanna Burton was appointed as executive director.

In September 2021, Biesenbach was appointed as new director of both the Neue Nationalgalerie with Berggruen Museum and Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection and the future Museum of the 20th Century.

In 2021, Biesenbach was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts by the New York Academy of Art.

Previously, he had been serving as the director of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), from 2018 to 2021. He is also a former Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City and former director of MoMA PS1. He is also the founding director of Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art (KW) in Berlin, and the Berlin Biennale.

In 2018, Biesenbach was appointed director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

In 2018 he received the City of New York Proclamation of Honor for service to New York City.

In 2016, Biesenbach was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In 2012, Biesenbach turned MoMA P.S. 1 into a temporary day shelter for displaced residents after Hurricane Sandy. He drafted an open letter to the then New York City Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg and fellow New Yorkers that called for help in the Rockaways, signed by celebrities including Lady Gaga, Madonna, James Franco, Gwyneth Paltrow and Patti Smith.

Biesenbach received the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) award for the exhibitions Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present, Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters), and Fassbinder: Berlin Alexanderplatz. He also received AICA awards for co-curating the exhibitions Kenneth Anger, 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009), and Roth Time: A Dieter Roth Retrospective and 100 Years (version #2 PS1, Nov 2009) at MoMA PS1 and MoMA QNS, as well as Kenneth Anger (2009) at MoMA PS1.and 100 Years (version #2 PS1, Nov 2009) at MoMA PS1 and MoMA QNS, as well as Kenneth Anger (2009) at MoMA PS1.

In 2004, Biesenbach was appointed as a curator in the MoMA's "Department of Film and Media". He was named Chief Curator of MoMA's newly formed Department of Media, in 2006; it was the first new curatorial department since photography, in 1940. By 2009, it was subsequently broadened to the Department of Media and Performance Art to reflect the Museum's increased focus on collecting, preserving, and exhibiting performance art. As Chief Curator of the department, Biesenbach led a range of pioneering initiatives, including the launch of a new performance art exhibition series; an ongoing series of workshops for artists and curators; acquisitions of media and performance art; and the Museum's presentation in 2010 of a major retrospective of the work of Marina Abramović.

In addition to his role at MoMA, Biesenbach served as member of the International Jury at the Venice Biennale (1997) and as co-curator of the Berlin Biennale (1998) and 2002 Shanghai Biennale (2002).

Biesenbach joined MoMA PS1 as a curator in 1996; the museum's director Alanna Heiss had hired him part-time while allowing him to maintain his directorship in Berlin. Working with Heiss, he created the "Warm Up" outdoor summer series of live music and helped found the "Greater New York" exhibition series, which showcases emerging talent in the metropolitan area.

Biesenbach founded Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art (KW) in Berlin in 1991, as well as the Berlin Biennale in 1996, and remains Founding Director of both entities. Under his artistic and executive directorship, KW and the Berlin Biennale were started as self-inventive initiatives and are now federally and state funded institutions.

Klaus Biesenbach (born 1966) is a European American curator and the museum director. He is the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, with Berggruen Museum and Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, as well as the Berlin Museum of Modern Art under construction, Museum des 20. Jahrhunderts.

Biesenbach was born in 1966, in Bergisch Gladbach, West Germany. From 1987, he began studying medicine in Munich. He moved to Berlin in the mid-1990s, where he shared an apartment with artist Andrea Zittel at one point.