Wouter Davidts lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. He is Adjunct-Professor at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University (UGent) and yearly teaches a course at the Drama Department of the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp. He has been awarded the 2015 Chillida Visiting Professorship at the Art History Institute of Goethe University in Frankfurt.
From 2009 until 2012 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at VU University in Amsterdam. Between 2003 and 2008 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning, Ghent University, where he obtained a PhD on museum architecture in 2003. He was a British Academy research fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London (2006), research fellow at the Research Group of Visual Arts, Academie voor Kunst en Vormgeving|St Joost, Avans Hogeschool (2007-2008), and a visiting research fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2008).
He is the author of Bouwen voor de kunst? Museumarchitectuur van Centre Pompidou tot Tate Modern (A&S/books, 2006) and has published on the museum, contemporary art and architecture in journals such as Afterall, Archis, De Witte Raaf, Footprint, Kritische Berichten, Metropolis M, OASE and Parachute, and in books and exhibition catalogues. His exhibition reviews have appeared a.o. in Artforum, Camera Austria, Sculpture and OPEN. A selection of his essays on art, architecture and the museum is forthcoming (Valiz, 2015). Currently he is working on a book-length project on size and scale in postwar art, entitled Larger than the Body: Size and Scale in Postwar American Art, for which he received a 2015 Terra Foundation for American Art International Research Travel Grant.
He edited The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work (Valiz, 2009; with Kim Paice), CRACK: Koen van den Broek (Valiz, 2010), and most recently, Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (Valiz, 2012; with Guy Châtel & Stefaan Vervoort).
He curated Philippe Van Snick. Undisclosed Recipients at BK SM in Mechelen (2006; with Hilde Van Gelder), Beginners & Begetters at Extra City in Antwerp (2007), Abstract USA 1958–1968. In the Galleries at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede (2010), Alentour in the Gallery Micheline Szwajcer in Antwerp (2012), Friends and Neighbors in the new studio space of Koen van den Broek (2013), and Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office at Stroom Den Haag (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort) and Extra City Antwerp (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort). Together with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten he compiled The Corner Show (Fall 2015, Extra City Antwerp). Currently he is preparing an exhibition by the American artist James Casebere (2016, BOZAR, Brussels).