Kirsten Lloyd is a curator and Senior Lecturer in the School of History of Art. She Directs the MSc by Research in Collections and Curating Practices.
Her research focuses on late 20th and 21st art, including lens-based practice, participatory work, the art document and realism as well as the histories, theories and pragmatics of curating. She is an academic lead for the University’s new Contemporary Art Research Collection.
Kirsten is currently working on a single-authored book titled Social Documents, examining the ‘document trend’ in contemporary art since 1968 and linking it to the demand for the circulation of social knowledge and increasingly urgent questions around representation and realism in the 21st century. She is also a Research Fellow with the ‘Social Reproduction: Looking for Jeanne’ (2019 – 2022) project, funded by the Swedish Research Council.
Recent publications include a co-edited special issue of Third Text (with Angela Dimitrakaki) on Social Reproduction and Art (2017). “If You Lived Here… : A Case Study on Social Reproduction in Feminist Art History,” in Feminism and Art History Now (I.B. Tauris, 2017); “Shaping Collections: Globalisation and Contemporary Art,” in Affiliate: Thinking Collections Yearbook (Affiliate, 2016); “Being with, across, over and through: Caring Subjects, Ethics Debates and the Encounter in Contemporary Art,” in her co-edited volume ECONOMY: Art Production & The Subject in the 21st Century (Liverpool University Press, 2015); “Endgame? Reconfiguring the Artwork,” Third Text 26, no. 5 (2012).
Kirsten has co-convened a number of research workshops, symposia and conference panels on ‘Labours of Love, Works of Passion: The Social (Re)production of Art Workers from Industrialisation to Globalisation,’ at the 2016 Association of Art Historians conference; the SGSAH-funded workshop ‘Curating Materiality: Feminism and Contemporary Art History’ (2015); ‘Social Reproduction in Postwar and Contemporary Art,’ at the 2014 Historical Materialism conference; ‘The Ethics of Encounter” AHRC-funded workshop at The University of Edinburgh and Stills (2011); ‘Radical Complicities: Curating Art in the 21st Century,’ at the National Galleries of Scotland (2010). She also founded the ‘Social Reproduction in Art Life and Struggle’ reading group with Victoria Horne, now run with Collective.
Kirsten is the Lead for the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities Cultural and Museum Studies Discipline+ Catalyst.
Board and steering group memberships in the visual arts sector include Scottish Contemporary Art Network (2012 – 2018), Market Gallery Glasgow (2011 – 2015), Visual Art and Galleries Association Scotland (2008 – 2012) and The Edinburgh Art Festival (2005 – 2008).
