Draft:Thomas Schulte

Thomas Schulte (born June 18, 1955) is a German art dealer, gallerist, art historian, and owner of Galerie Thomas Schulte in Berlin, founded in 1991.

Early life and education
Schulte was born in Oberhausen, Rheinland, Germany as the youngest of four siblings. Schulte studied art, art education, art history, and aesthetics at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Bochum, and Cologne and began his Phd at the Free University Berlin. His dissertation on "the Window as pictorial Motive in the Works of Jan Vermeer van Delft" brought Thomas Schulte to New York on a research scholarship in the early 1980's, which was followed by an internship at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Career
Schulte's internship at the Museum of Modern Art eventually lead him to the position of assistant curator, where he worked in from 1982 to 1987. He joined the John Weber Gallery as director until 1990. In early 1991, Schulte and Eric Franck moved from New York to Berlin to found Galerie Franck + Schulte, which was among the first new galleries in Berlin after the German reunification. The gallery was situated on Momsenstrasse in the Charlottenburg district of former West Berlin.

Their opening show "Chor der Heuschrecken" by Rebecca Horn was met with critical acclaim internationally, positioning the Franck + Schulte among the leading galleries for contemporary art in Germany. The early gallery program focused on classic and contemporary conceptual art, including artists including Richard Artschwager, Alighiero e Boetti, Rebecca Horn, Magdalena Jetelová, Sol LeWitt, Allan McCollum, Pat Steir, Helmut Federle and Robert Mapplethorpe. Further positions like Alice Aycock, Alfredo Jaar, Stephen Willats, Richard Deacon, Jonathan Lasker, Fabian Marcaccio, Gordon Matta-Clark, Matt Mullican, Katharina Sieverding and Juan Uslé, would later define the gallery's program over the next years.

In 2006, the gallery, now under the name Galerie Thomas Schulte, moved to Charlottenstrasse in Berlin-Mitte, opening its rooms in the nineteenth-century Tuteur House, known for its prominent tripartite, nine-meter-high display window, which was added to the building in 1913 by architect, Hermann Muthesius.

The gallery is a regular participant at Art Basel, Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel Hong Kong, ARCO Madrid, and the Armory Show in New York as well as Gallery Weekend Berlin. Schulte has been a committee member of the Art Basel, Artissima Bologna, ARCO Madrid, and the Armory Show, New York.

Personal Life
Schulte lives in Berlin and has two adult children. His son also works in the gallery.