[2] David studied Spanish and Portuguese literature, linguistics and art history at the Université de la Sorbonne and the École du Louvre in Paris, where she was born and lives.

[4] In the 1990s, she took part to a worldwide movement with Okwui Enwezor, judging art according to natural disasters, migration policies and gender war.

Documenta X still is one of the most relevant major exhibitions of the 20th Century, a place where the ideas of Center and Periphery, Modern and Pre-Modern could be examined and understood.

[8] Catherine David lead the way to show what "political art" means, and inspired the programme of a good number of museums around Europe in the early 21st Century.

In 2009 she organized a retrospective in honor of the Iranian photographer Bahman Jalali, again at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona[16] and was artistic director of the first national presentation of the ADACH (Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage) at the Venice Biennale.