Francesco Manacorda was a co-curator of Liverpool Biennial 2016.

Between 2007 and 2009 he served as curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, where he realized the large-scale exhibitions Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art and Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009 (2009). In 2007 he curated the Slovenian Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale and in 2009 the New Zealand Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale, while in 2013 he was a member of the International Jury for the 55th Venice Biennale. His curatorial practice has also included freelance projects such as Subcontinent – The Indian Subcontinent in Contemporary Art, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino, Italy (2006).

From February 2010 to March 2012, he was director of Artissima, the international fair of contemporary art in Turin, and from 2012 to 2017 he was artistic director of Tate Liverpool where he curated exhibitions such as Mondrian and His Studios; Glenn Ligon: Encounter and Collisions; An Imagined Museum; Leonora Carrington: Transgressing Discipline; and Cathy Wilkes. In 2016 he co-curated the Liverpool Biennial and in 2018 the 11th Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM). He was visiting lecturer in exhibition history and critical theory at the curating contemporary art department of the Royal College of Art, London from 2006 to 2011. He is currently artistic director of the V-A-C Foundation and visiting professor at LJMU School of Art and Design in Liverpool.