Wouter Davidts teaches at the Department of Art History, Musicology and Theatre Studies and the Department of Architecture & Urban Planning at Ghent University (UGent), where he founded the interdisciplinary research KB45 (Kunst in België sinds 1945 / Art in Belgium since 1945).
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), a Visiting Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2008), and a Visiting Fellow at ATCH (Architecture Theory Criticism History) research centre of the School of Architecture, University of Queensland, Brisbane (2016). From 2009 until 2012 he was Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art at VU University in Amsterdam. In 2015 he was awarded the Eduardo Chillida Professorship at the Art History Institute of the Goethe University in Frankfurt. He was partner-investigator of 'Is Architecture Art?', a research project of the Centre for Architecture, Theory, History and Criticism (ATCH), at the School of Architecture, University of Queensland in partnership with Ghent University, funded by a Discovery Grant of the Australian Research Council. (2015-2022).
He is the author of Triple Bond, a selection of essays on art, architecture and the museum (Valiz, 2017) and Bouwen voor de kunst? Museumarchitectuur van Centre Pompidou tot Tate Modern (A&S/books, 2006). He 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, Sculpture Journal and in books and exhibition catalogues. His exhibition reviews have appeared a.o. in Artforum, Camera Austria, Sculpture and OPEN. .
He edited The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work (Valiz, 2009; with Kim Paice), CRACK: Koen van den Broek (Valiz, 2010), Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office: Orban Space (Valiz, 2012; with Guy Châtel & Stefaan Vervoort), Philippe Vandenberg: Absence Etc. (Hauser & Wirth Pubishers, 2017), Trading Between Architecture and Art: Strategies and Practices of Exchange (Valiz, 2019; with Susan Holden and Ashley Paine), and most recently, with KB45, Diepdruk - Vlakdruk - Hoogdruk - Doordruk: 50 jaar Frans Masereel Centrum 1972-2022 (Hannibal, 2022).
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), Orban Space: Luc Deleu – T.O.P. office at Stroom Den Haag (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort) and Extra City Antwerp (2013; with Stefaan Vervoort), The Corner Show (Fall 2015, Extra City Antwerp; with Mihnea Mircan and Philip Metten), and After Scale Model: Dwelling in the Work of James Casebere (2016, BOZAR, Brussels), Round About or Inside (Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia, 2020), Project Palace / Projet Palais / Project Paleis (2021, BOZAR, Brussels) and Eromheen of erin (2021, VANDENHOVE).
He is working on a book-length project on size and scale in postwar art, entitled Scale is Content, for which he received a 2015 Terra Foundation for American Art International Research Travel Grant.
