In the framework of the ΕΜΣΤ International Curators Visiting Programme
Collecting and Exhibiting Photography at the V&A, London
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London, was the first museum in the world to collect photographs, beginning in the 1850s. Today it holds about 800,000 photographs and its Photography Centre is the largest suite of galleries in the UK dedicated a public photography collection. As Lead Curator of the Photography Centre, Dr Marta Weiss oversaw its most recent expansion, which opened in May 2023. In this talk, in the framework of the ΕΜΣΤ International Curators Visiting Programme, she will introduce the V&A’s collection and share her insights into collecting and exhibiting photography within a museum context.
The lecture will be held in English.
BIOGRAPHY
Dr Marta Weiss has been a Senior Curator and Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), London since 2007. As Lead Curator of the V&A Photography Centre, completed in 2023, she oversaw the creation of the UK’s largest space for a photography collection. Originally from New York, she studied history of art, with a specialisation in photography, at Harvard (BA) and Princeton (MA, PhD) and spent two years as a curatorial fellow in the Department of Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Weiss’s numerous V&A exhibitions include The Camera Exposed (2016); Staying Power: Photographs of Black British Experience 1950s-1990s (2015); Light from the Middle East: New Photography (2012); and Julia Margaret Cameron (2015), which toured to five international venues. Her books include Julia Margaret Cameron: Photographs to electrify you with delight and startle the world (2015); Autofocus: The Car in Photography (2019); Making It Up: Photographic Fictions (2018); and, with Lisa Springer, Julia Margaret Cameron: Arresting Beauty (2023).
ΕΜΣΤ INTERNATIONAL CURATORS VISITING PROGRAMME
GREECE 2.0
The ΕΜΣΤ International Curators Visiting Programme is part of the Project SUB 6.4 “Actions to promote Greek cultural exports and strengthen the Greek cultural name by the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens”, which is implemented within the framework of the National Recovery Plan and Resilience, “Greece 2.0”, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
ACCESS
Entry is free with admission tickets that will be distributed on a first-come first-served basis half an hour before the event.
PHOTOGRAPHS
Photographs: Estela Valasi
