Frances has a joint post with the University of Edinburgh and the National Galleries of Scotland. She has curated numerous international exhibitions and her main area of specialism is French and Scottish nineteenth-century art, with an emphasis on collecting, the art market, national identity, cultural revival and artistic networks.
Frances is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Senior Trustee of the Burrell Collection, Glasgow, Chair of the Hospitalfield Trust and a Patron of Paisley Museum Reimagined. She is on the Scholarly Advisory Board of the RKD (Netherlands Institute for Art History) and also of the Van Gogh Worldwide project, a digital platform for all works by Vincent Van Gogh. She is a Group Leader for Art UK and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History. She was Chair of the Association for Art History from 2019-2023 and is a co-founder and former Board member of the International Art Market Studies Association (TIAMSA), 2017-2022. She was the 2022 Van Gogh Museum Visiting Fellow.
Frances began her career working for Sotheby's auctioneers and, briefly, as an arts journalist. She gained her PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 1994 and has taught at the universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and at Edinburgh College of Art. She worked in the curatorial department at Tate Britain before joining the National Galleries of Scotland in 2001. She was appointed to her current post in 2005.
