Penelope Curtis
Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Penelope Curtis, 53, studied Contemporary History at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1979-1982) and did a Master's Degree and a doctorate on French sculpture after Rodin at the Courtauld Institute of Art (1983-1989). In April 2010, she joined the Tate Britain Museum as Director, where she oversaw numerous successful exhibitions, as well as the opening of the new Tate Britain Museum in 2013 and the critically acclaimed reorganization of its collections. She also chaired the jury for the award Turner.

Prior to directing the Tate Britain Museum, in 1999 Penelope Curtis began working as a curator at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, where she was responsible for development a distinctive and acclaimed program of exhibitions on sculpture of all periods. At the same time, she oversaw the development of the Leeds center's collections and its research and publications program, as well as the acquisition of major works of art, including pieces by Rodin, Epstein, and Calder. He also created a unique file of documentation on sculptors.

In 1994 she joined the staff of Leeds Museums & Galleries as director of the Henry Moore Centre for the study of sculpture and led its transformation to become the Henry Moore Institute, where research and collections have played an important role alongside the exhibition program. Previously, she was the first curator of exhibitions at Tate Liverpool when it opened in 1988 and closely followed the collections of the British Tate galleries. Some of the most important exhibitions she has curated directly or at partnership with other professionals include: Barbara Hepworth: retrospective (Tate Liverpool, 1994); Sculpture in Painting (Henry Moore Institute, 2010); and Contemporary British Sculpture (Royal Academy, 2011).

Penelope Curtis is a well-known researcher and author with a particular interest in interwar art and architecture and contemporary art, subjects on which she has produced much literature for many artists. She often lectures and recently gave a series of lectures at the framework of the National Gallery's lecture series Paul Mellon Lectures which were repeated at Yale in April 2015. He has also been speaker at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), the Guggenhein and several universities in the UK and abroad. Some of his publications include Sculpture 1900-1945 in the Oxford History of Art (Oxford 1999) and Patio & Pavilion: the place of sculpture in modern architecture (Ridinghouse/Getty 2007). Curtis has also been a member of the committee Art Commissions of the Imperial War Museum and is currently a member of the committee advisor for the Government Art Collection and the British School at Rome (Rome).