Christian Herren is a Swiss curator, researcher, and cultural manager whose practice connects art-historical scholarship, exhibition-making, and provenance research with institutional development. Across projects shaped in collaboration with different teams, he is particularly interested in how local and transnational art histories can be made visible alongside one another and brought into dialogue.

In 2026, he curated Frame in Frame at WSA New York, reactivating structural and experimental films produced at the Basel School of Design from the late 1960s onwards and connecting them with the work of Sarah Morris and Marlene McCarty. In 2024, he curated the most comprehensive exhibition of modern Swiss cultural and object history presented in China to date. He also joined the core team of the 2026 Basel Social Club, which welcomed around 70,000 visitors and included works by Marina Abramović, Barbara Kruger, and Chim↑Pom from Smappa!Group. Christian Herren is currently developing an exhibition on Walter De Maria for the Bechtler Foundation.

He conceived and co-edited the E.A.T. INDEX (JRP|Editions), initiated by Cristina Bechtler and Hans Ulrich Obrist, bringing together voices as distinct as Vito Acconci, Camille Henrot, Rasha Salti, and Ibrahim Mahama. A passionate book producer, his work also explores design at the intersection of art and functional objects, including research on the Simon Collection by Dino Gavina — such as Meret Oppenheim’s Traccia table and works by Marion Baruch. His research on Old Master drawings from the Hans Rohr Collection fed into Dürer and Beyond at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which acquired several works from the collection. He is also an associate researcher on Abstraction Before the Age of Abstract Art, based at the EHESS in Paris and Case Western Reserve University.

Herren is Collection Director and a board member of the Stiftung Kunstsammlung Teo Jakob, coordinates the International Advisory Board of Kunsthaus Zürich, and serves on the board of the Rudolf Urech-Seon Foundation. Through Office Christian Herren, founded in 2011, he develops and directs exhibitions, collection projects, and institutional strategies internationally, combining curatorial vision with budget management and global partnerships. He also regularly moderates public conversations and interventions with figures including Mario Botta, Chus Martínez, Álvaro Barrington, and Giovanna Castiglioni.