Alexander Farenholtz (born 1954) grew up in Hamburg and Stuttgart. After completing his studies (administrative science in Constance) with a second state examination (Hamburg) and his first professional positions, he was appointed managing director of documenta GmbH in 1989 to realise documenta 9 under the artistic direction of Jan Hoet. In 1993, he moved to the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Art as Head of the Minister’s Office and in 1996, together with Tom Stromberg, took over the management of the cultural programme of the EXPO2000 world exhibition in Hanover. At the beginning of 2002, he was appointed founding director and administrative director of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. He held this position alongside Hortensia Völckers as Artistic Director until she reached retirement age in January 2020. Following the resignation of the Director General, he once again temporarily took over the management of documenta 15 in 2022 for the duration of the exhibition.

Farenholtz continues to work in an honorary capacity as a board member of the Georg Kolbe Foundation, as a member of the boards of trustees of the Kunsthalle Tübingen, the Akademie Schloss Solitude Stuttgart, the Podium Music Foundation, the Max Planck Institute for Ethnological Research Halle and the Villa Romana Florence, as well as the administrative board of the Gabriele Münter Foundation Munich and was chairman of the university council of the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig for fourteen years until the end of 2013.