From 1992 until his retirement in 2002, Belting was professor at the Institute for Art History and Media Theory at the State College of Design in Karlsruhe.

[2] From October 2004 until the end of September 2007, Belting served as Director of the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften [de] (International Research Centre for Cultural Studies) in Vienna.

[8] Belting argued that art history as a disciplinary formation was outmoded and potentially obsolete,[9] and that a Bildwissenschaft capable of apprehending all kinds of images, the exact scope and methods of which remain uncertain, should be sought.

The project, which ran until 2016, took a look at new museum practices and the worldwide development of art biennials that have emerged beyond "Euramerica" (John Clark) since the end of the 1980s.

[12] Belting was a member of scientific academies in Germany and the U.S., including the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities,[13] a fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study,[14] and honorary member of the Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin.