Chris Reitz is Director and Chair of the Hite Institute of Art + Design and Associate Professor of Critical and Curatorial Studies. His research focuses on 20th and 21st century transnational art and exhibition histories, with particular attention to questions of labor, leisure, and cultural exchange between Europe and the United States.

His book, Martin Kippenberger: Everything is Everywhere (MIT Press, 2023), is the first English-language scholarly monograph on the West German artist. His writing has appeared in scholarly journals and leading venues for contemporary criticism, including Critical Inquiry, October, Texte zur Kunst, non-site, N+1, and The Baffler.

As the Hite Institute's primary curator, Reitz has organized solo exhibitions by Judy Chicago, Sanford Biggers, Sislej Xhafa, For Freedoms, and Peter Williams, as well as the group exhibitions "Painting in the Network: Algorithm and Appropriation" and "Conspiratorial Aesthetics," among others. Prior to pursuing his PhD, he worked as a project manager at Public Art Fund in New York and as an independent curator.

Reitz served as chair of Louisville's Commission on Public Art from 2018 to 2025 and was appointed to the mayor's commission charged with making recommendations concerning Louisville's contested monuments in 2018. He regularly serves on local and national review committees and received the University of Louisville President's Distinguished Faculty Award for Service to the Community in 2018.