Roland Recht was awarded a Focillon Fellowship at Yale University in 1972, and obtained his PhD from Strasbourg University in 1978. From 1980 to 1986, he held a professorship at the University of Burgundy and was subsequently appointed Director General of the Museums of Strasbourg until 1993. During his time as director, he organised 40 exhibitions and implemented an active acquisition policy, while simultaneously laying the foundations for the future Museum of Modern and contemporary Art. He became a professor at Strasbourg University Marc Bloch, where he presided the Institute of Art History as well as the Doctoral School of Humanities.

In 2001, Roland Recht was elected to the Collège de France, where he held the Chair of History of Medieval and Modern European art until 2012. Since 2003, he is also a member of the Institut de France (Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-lettres). He was a visiting Professor at the University of Heidelberg in 2007. He was director of the Revue de l’Art from 2001 to 2005 and has been member of a number of editorial boards of international journals. He is, or has been, a member of the National Commission of Historic Monuments, of the Louvre museum’s Acquisitions Committee, of the Scientific Council of the German National Museum in Nuremberg, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the French Committee of Art History, as well as of the scientific boards of the National Institute of Art History, the German Centre for Art History, the École du Louvre - School of Art History, and of the Fine Arts committee of the Institut de France.

Roland Recht is the author of over two hundred articles on art in the Middle Ages and from the 18th to 20th centuries, as well as on the historiography and theory of art. He has published or edited some 20 books. In 2001, the Academy of Architecture awarded him the Medal for the History of Art. In 2009, he received the Reimar-Lüst prize from the Humboldt Foundation and, in 2012, an Honorary Prize from Fond'Action Alsace. He is a Commander of the French National Order of Merit, and Knight of the French Legion of Honour.