Ntenis Zacharopoulos

Denis Zacharopoulos is an art historian and critic, and the artistic director of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art in Thessaloniki. He was born in Athens on June 11, 1952. He graduated from Leonteios School in 1970 and simultaneously studied music and music history at the Athens Conservatory. He pursued studies in modern literature and aesthetics at the University of Aix-en-Provence, sociology of art, and the significance of representational systems at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He obtained a higher diploma in social sciences under J. Cassou in 1976 and a master's degree in art history and theory with L. Marin, H. Damish, and G. Genette in 1980. From 1980 to 1985, he regularly attended the doctoral seminar in philosophy and aesthetics by L. Marin. From 1986 to 1991, he taught at the Geneva University of Art and Design; from 1986 to 1993, at the Postgraduate School of the National Center for Contemporary Art, "Le Magazin," in Grenoble; from 1992 to 1996, he was elected honorary professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and director of the Institute of Contemporary Art. He taught as a professor in the postgraduate program at the Rijksacademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam and as a visiting professor at the Hochschule für Kunst und Gestaltung in Bern. Since 2002, he has been teaching art history and museology at the Department of Cultural Technology and Communication at the University of the Aegean in Mytilene. He has served as the director of the Center for Contemporary Art and Culture and Sculpture Park, Domaine de Kerguehennec in Brittany, France, from 1992 to 1999. He was the co-director of Documenta IX in Kassel in 1992 and the commissioner of the French Pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999. He has been an advisor to the Committee for the Recognition of Higher Diplomas in Fine Arts of the Federal Conference of Public Education in Switzerland. He has curated and organized numerous exhibitions in museums and art centers in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Austria, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Montenegro, and the USA. He was elected General Inspector of Fine Arts at the Ministry of Culture of France in 1999, a position he resigned from in 2000. He served as an advisor and member of the National Collection of Contemporary Art of France from 1993 to 2000, the regional collections of Champagne and Ardennes from 1997 to 2000, and Nord-Pas-de-Calais from 1984 to 1990. He was a member of the international cultural policy committee of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1993 to 1999. From 1987 to 1989, he participated as a member of the Exhibition Committee of the Spanish Ministry of Culture. He was the Program Coordinator of the Greek Month in London, 1975-1976, at the Institute of Contemporary Art. He assisted T. Spiteris from 1973 to 1979 in writing the three-volume "Three Centuries of Modern Greek Art (1660-1967)." As an art critic, he collaborated with many magazines. He has published books, catalogs, essays, and studies on contemporary art, painting, sculpture, arte povera, murals, space, representation, architecture, landscape, sound, art history, methodology, the history of institutions, art criticism, and a significant number of monographs on contemporary and historical artists. He has lectured and participated in, directed, and organized conferences at numerous museums, institutions, and universities in Europe and America.