[5] From 1983 onwards, he also began teaching video and cinema at the KU Leuven, and at the Hoger Instituut voor Beeldende Kunsten, St Lukas, Brussels.

[9][8] In 1995, he curated the exhibition at the Dutch pavilion during the that year's Venice Biennale, featuring Marlene Dumas, Maria Roosen and Marijke van Warmerdam.

[10] In his first year, he notably invited Ydessa Hendeles to co-curate Partners, combining work by Diane Arbus, Maurizio Cattelan, James Coleman, Hanne Darboven, Walker Evans, Luciano Fabro, On Kawara, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Giulio Paolini, Jeff Wall and Lawrence Weiner[11] with Hendeles's own artwork Partners (The Teddy Bear Project) (2002), a large-scale installation built around an archive of family-album photographs, each including the image of a teddy bear.

[15] Whilst at Tate Modern, Dercon sat on the committee which chose Ferran Barenblit to be the new Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in 2015.

[18][19] His first season began with a wide variety of productions including a 10-hour dance event in which the audience were asked to join in, and an installation by filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

[26] Dercon currently serves as a board member for Wiels in Brussels, the Fondation d’Entreprise Galeries Lafayette in Paris, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany, the Visual Arts and Museums Commissions of the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.