about

Dr. Christoph Balzar is an art historian and museum curator, born in 1980 in Hirschau and living in Berlin. He studied Visual Communication and Photography at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Aachen and completed an exchange program in Aboriginal Cultures and Philosophies at the Technical University of Sydney, Australia. He earned his Master’s degree in Curatorial Studies at the Institute for Art in Context at the Universität der Künste Berlin and completed his Ph.D. in Art History in 2021 at the Art History Institute of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.


Balzar specializes in the decolonization of ethnological museums, collections, and archives. His research and studies on sacred object collections from colonial contexts include works such as „Das kolonisierte Heiligtum“ (transcript Verlag, 2022), in which he examines the epistemic violence exerted by ethnographic museums and their historicities. In his curatorial practice, Balzar supports private and public institutions in organizational and project development, provenance research, and cultural management of cultural heritage. As a curator, he has been involved in numerous projects focused on the digitization and virtual accessibility of museum collections.


He teaches at various universities, including the Universität der Künste Berlin and the University of Potsdam. His teaching focuses on museological and curatorial topics, art and cultural mediation, as well as the integration of digital media in aesthetic and artistic research practices. Since December 2023, he has also been a lecturer at Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin, teaching the integration of artificial intelligence in academic research and education.


Dr. Christoph Balzar is a member of various committees and networks, including ICOM Germany, the BBK Bundesverband Bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler, and the AK Museen und Sammlungen, Decolonize Berlin. He is a founding member and curator of the virtual space at BARAZANI.berlin and oversees the decolonial project space Spreeufer in Berlin-Mitte. His work spans international projects, including collaborations with various indigenous communities from Australia, Colombia, Peru, Togo, and Benin.




Research Interests

Museums, Collections, and Archives

German Colonial History

20th and 21st Century Art History

Digital Cultural Studies