Armin Zweite grew up in Flensburg from 1945. He studied history, German studies, philosophy and art history in Kiel and Tübingen and received his doctorate in Göttingen from Karl Arndt on the Antwerp painter Marten de Vos (1532−1603). With a scholarship from the German state of Lower Saxony, Zweite spent a year at the University of California at Berkeley in 1970. In 1971 he met Michael Petzet, then second director of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich, and assisted him in the exhibition "Bavaria, Art and Culture", which took place at the Munich City Museum on the occasion of the Olympic Games. When Petzet became director of the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich in 1972, he hired Zweite as curator. Only two years later, Zweiter himself became director of the museum. During his tenure, Zweite expanded the collection, against great resistance, to include important works of contemporary art. In particular, Joseph Beuys' work "zeige deine Wunde" ("show your wound") was the stone of offence at the time. Today, it is one of the most important works in the collection. Zweite was the 1977 Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Biennale des Jeunes in Paris. He was also Commissioner of the Federal Republic of Germany for the São Paulo Biennale three times, where he exhibited works by Rainer Wittenborn and Claus Biegert, Markus Lüpertz and A. R. Penck in 1983, by Peter Bömmels, Albert Hien and Jiří Georg Dokoupil in 1985 and by Anselm Kiefer in 1987. From 1990 to 2007 he was Second Director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. Under his direction, the museum was expanded by the addition of the Ständehaus (K21), an exhibition space of 1,800 square metres. On display are both classical modern and contemporary art exhibitions, including Wols (1990), Max Ernst (1991), Bernd Koberling (1991), Richard Serra (1992), Wassily Kandinsky (1992), Robert Rauschenberg (1994), George Grosz (1995), Markus Lüpertz (1996), Katharina Sieverding (1997), Jackson Pollock (1999), Georg Baselitz (2003), Rebecca Horn (2004), Gerhard Richter (2005) and Francis Bacon (2006). From 2008 to 2013, Zweite oversaw the Brandhorst Collection in Munich. He became director of the newly opened Brandhorst Museum and chaired the Udo und Anette Brandhorst Stiftung as managing director. Zweite is a full member of the Visual Arts Department of the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts.