Freelance curator, researcher, museum consultant
PROJECTS
Current and recent research and consultancy projects
MUSEUM OF LONDON
Consultancy for
Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners shaped global style
Fashion City is a new exhibition by Museum of London, exploring the major contribution of Jewish designers in making London an iconic fashion city. I worked as a 'critical friend' to the curatorial team throughout the exhibition's development, advising on the themes, content and messaging, with a particular focus on the representation of Jewish culture and history.
IMAGE: Carnaby Street, 1968. H. Grobe, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
TATE ARCHIVE
Convenor of Émigré Art Archives Symposium
The Émigré Art Archives project at Tate Archive catalogued and digitised over 300 boxes of previously unsorted archival materials from three émigré archive collections: the extensive papers of the Czech art historian and critic Josef Paul Hodin, the sketchbooks of the Polish-Jewish artist Jankel Adler and the family papers of the art curator and publisher David Mayor.
I was engaged by Tate to organise and host a half-day symposium, to celebrate the culmination of this project and engage scholars and researchers with these archives. The event took place in June 2023, featuring presentations from six eminent art historians, broadcast live from Tate Britain. The recording of the symposium can be viewed online here.
IMAGE: Jankel Adler, Sketch on page 5 of Sketchbook 12 [c.1944-9], Tate Archive (TGA 201218/12). Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)
IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM (LONDON)
Research for new permanent galleries
In 2021 the Imperial War Museum opened their new Second World War and Holocaust galleries. I was contracted as a freelance researcher for the new Holocaust galleries, sourcing narrative content, archival material and audio-visual assets for use in gallery exhibits and digital interactives.
IMAGE: Pages from the diary of Adam Czerniaków
I am currently researching a rare archive belonging to my late aunt, Avril Eventhal, who, as Avril A, was an eccentric and much-loved performer in the gay clubs of Manchester in the 1980s and ‘90s. When she died in 2017, she left behind a vast amount of fascinating material, much of which relates to the history of Manchester's (pre Queer as Folk) gay scene, including many clubs no longer around. I'm working on bringing Avril's story to a wider public through film and exhibitions, as well as making the archive available to researchers and academics. Click here to find out more and view a selection of the material. Please get in touch if you knew Avril or if you are interested in being involved as a project partner.
STAGING DIFFICULT PASTS:
OF NARRATIVES, OBJECTS AND PUBLIC MEMORY
Research Partner
Staging Difficult Pasts is an AHRC-funded project examining how theatres and museums shape public memory of difficult pasts. The project is a collaboration between the Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance at Royal Holloway, University of London, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London and various other international institiutions and practitioners.
As one of the research partners I worked with the Parque de la Memoria - Monument to the Victims of State Terrorism in Buenos Aires to explore connections between my curatorial practice and cultural memory in post-dictatorship Argentina. In November 2019 I delivered lectures and workshops to the museum, arts, human rights, and academic communities in Buenos Aires. My presentation 'Exhibiting Absence and Loss: Objects, Narratives and Trauma on Display' can be viewed here.
IMAGE: Federico Lo Bianco
MIGRATION MUSEUM
Migration history timeline
(postponed due to COVID-19)
I was approached by the Migration Museum in London to curate a display for their new home in Lewisham Shopping Centre, telling the story of migration to the UK. The timeline was to cover centuries of history, tracing a line through the ‘long-view’ of this fascinating story and debunking the myth that immigration to this country is a recent phenomenon. Due to COVID-19 this project was indefinitely postponed.
IMAGE: Windrush Scandal protest, London, 28 April 2018. Photo by Steven Eason