Marquard Smith

Background

About Marquard Smith

I’m an enthusiastic, creative, and careful academic, curator, programmer, editor, mentor, and consultant. I enjoy working between higher education and cultural institutions (galleries, museums, NPOs, charities, etc.), devising and realising exhibitions, public programmes, and publishing initiatives. I love collaborating, leading and managing research cultures, and working with colleagues and students; and I have a particular commitment to doctoral education in the Arts & Humanities.+ Currently, I’m Academic Director of LAHP, an AHRC doctoral training partnership. I also work with MA & PhD students at UCL IoE and UCL Slade School of Fine Art. I’m Professor of Artistic Research at Vilnius Academy of Arts, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief, ‘Journal of Visual Culture’. Previous roles as an academic leader/manager include: Acting Director, PhD Programme, UCL Slade; Programme Leader, MA Museums & Galleries in Education, UCL IOE; Head, School of Art & Design History, and co-founder & co-director, Visual & Material Culture Research Centre, Kingston: Research Leader & Head of Doctoral Studies, School of Humanities, RCA: and Founding Director, Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture, Westminster. As a scholar/researcher, my research & publishing activities contribute to debates in contemporary art & visual cultures, practice-led research, and the medical humanities. I've published 20+ books, edited collections, and themed issues of refereed academic journals. Recent & forthcoming publications concern arts education, the archival impulse, decolonisation, collaboration & participation, and research as a subject of research. In addition to my 30+ years’ experience in HE, I collaborate regularly with organisations such as Arts Catalyst, Fitzwilliam Museum, ICA, LADA, MK Gallery, New Contemporaries, Freud Museum, Tate, and Wellcome Collection on exhibitions, publications, public programming, and consultancy. As a curator, I engage with the idea of research-as-praxis in which making, curating, and exhibitions as practice-led activities are generative of new ways of thinking, seeing, knowing, and doing. Working with incredibly inspiring collaborators, I've curated exhibitions/curatorial projects in commercial, public & university galleries (and elsewhere) including: ‘A Murmuration I, II, and (2022, 2023, 2025), ‘Do The Right Thing’ (Titanikas, Vilnius, 2019), ‘Fight The Power’ (Morion/Research Pavillion, Venice, 2019), ‘Solitary Pleasures’ (Freud Museum, 2018), ‘The Global Archive’ (2012), and ‘How We Became Metadata’ (2010).