Overview
Christine Macel is the chief curator at the Musée national d’art moderne–Centre Pompidou in Paris (2000–present). She is responsible for the Department of ‘Contemporary and prospective creation,’ which she founded and developed. Previously, she was a curator of the heritage and inspector of artistic creation for the ‘Délégation aux Arts Plastiques’ of the French Ministry of Culture (1995–2000).
She taught contemporary art at the École du Louvre in Paris from 1997 to 2002, and created or participated in the creation of various associations dedicated to contemporary art (Espace Blank, Paris), to art and neuroscience (AoN, Berlin), to art and techno music (Faste, Paris).
At the Pompidou, she also conceived and created Espace 315, a gallery dedicated to young artists around the world, for which she curated eight exhibitions between 2004 and 2013: Koo Jeong-A, Magnus Von Plessen, Xavier Veilhan, Jeppe Hein, Pawel Althamer, Damian Ortega, Tobias Putrih, L’Image dans la sculpture (Navid Nuur, Nina Beier, Simon Denny, Yorgos Sapountzis).
She was the curator of the French Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2013 (Anri Sala) and the Belgian Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2007 (Eric Duyckaerts). For the Centre Pompidou, she has curated and co-curated many group exhibitions, including Dancing your life: art and dance in the 20th and 21st centuries (2011) and The promises of the past: A discontinuous history of art in Eastern Europe since 1956 (2010). She also curated the solo exhibitions of artists such as Anri Sala (2012), Gabriel Orozco (2010), Philippe Parreno (2009), Sophie Calle (2003), Nan Goldin (2002) and Raymond Hains (2001).
In 2002 she was responsible for the concept, organisation and programming of ‘Prospectif Cinéma’, which spotlighted film production by young French and international artists. She also served as artistic director of the Festival du Printemps de Cahors for two years (ExtraetOrdinaire, 1999; Sensitive, 2000), and curated the exhibitions by Jeppe Hein at the Moore Space Miami (2005), by John Bock at the FRAC in Marseilles (2006) and by Ziad Antar at the Sharjah Foundation (2012).
She is the author of many essays, books and catalogues, including the essay Le Temps pris/Time Taken (French, English, Monografik/Centre Pompidou, 2008) on the theme of contemporary art and the concept of time in artworks.
She was born in 1969 in Paris where she continues to live and work.