Catherine David was a member of Iniva’s board of trustees.
Catherine David studied Linguistics and History of Art at the Université de la Sorbonne and Ecole du Louvre in Paris.
From 1982 to 1990 she was Curator at the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou and from 1990 to 1994 she was Curator at Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, both in Paris, where she organized several monographs and group exhibitions including: ‘Lothar Baumgarten; Passages de L’Image’; ‘Stan Douglas:Monodramas and Television Spots’; ‘Marcel Broodthaers; Helio Oiticica; Robert Gober’; ‘Jeff Wall and Chantal Ackerman: D’Est’, among others.
From 1994 to 1997 David served as Artistic Director for documenta X in Kassel, Germany, and from 1998 she is Director of the long-term project Contemporary Arab Representations produced by Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona. In 2000 she organised The State of Things for Kunst Werke, Berlin. Between 2002 and 2004 David was Director of the Witte de With Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From 2005 to 2006 she was fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin In 2007 she organised a monograph exhibition of Bahman Jalali at Tàpies Foundation in Barcelona and the interdisciplinary event: Di/Visions: Culture and Politics of the Middle East at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. In 2008 she received the Bard Award for curatorial excellence. In 2009 she was the curator of the ADACH (Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage) pavilion at Venice Biennal.
In March 2011 She organised Hassan Sharif’s exhibition ‘Experiments & Objects 1979-2011’ at the ADACH Exhibition hall in Abu Dhabi and launched the first monographic publication of the artist in Venice Biennale 2011.