Peter Weibel (born in 1944 in Odessa) studied literature, medicine, logic, philosophy, and film in Paris and Vienna. Since 1984 he is active as a professor at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Since 1999 Peter Weibel is Chairman and CEO of the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe.

From 1984 to 1989 he was head of the digital arts laboratory at the Media Department of the State University of New York at Buffalo, and in 1989 he founded the Institute of New Media at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main, which he directed until 1995. From 1986 to 1995 he was in charge of the Ars Electronica in Linz as artistic director, and from 1993 to 1999 he commissioned the Austrian pavilions at the Venice Biennale. From 1993 to 2011 he was chief curator of the Neue Galerie Graz. He was artistic director of the Seville Biennial (BIACS3), in 2008 and of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, in 2011. Since 2015, he is curator of the lichtsicht – Projection-Biennale in Bad Rothenfelde. Peter Weibel has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 2007, and by the University of Pécs, Hungary, in 2013. In 2008 the French Minister of Culture made him an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. The following year he was appointed a full member of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts Munich, and received the Europäischer Kultur-Projektpreis (European Cultural Project Award) of the European Foundation for Culture, he also received the Siemens Medienkunstpreis (1997) and the Käthe-Kollwitz-Preis (2004). In 2010, he was decorated with the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class. Since 2013 he is an active member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg. In 2014, he received the Oskar-Kokoschka-Preis (Oskar-Kokoschka-Prize).