Pivoting to the Commercial Art World

Molly (Dorkin) Taylor is Associate Director and Head of Research at Dickinson Gallery, a leading international dealership in Old Masters through to Contemporary Art. Molly worked as a specialist in Old Master Paintings at Christie’s before joining Dickinson in 2013, where she represents the gallery at art fairs and oversees all scholarly research. Molly holds degrees in art history from Harvard University, the Courtauld Institute and Magdalene College Cambridge, where she completed her PhD on the topic of plein-air landscape painting during the Grand Tour.

Sam Cornish is a writer and curator, with a particular interest in the abstract painting and sculpture made in Britain in the 1960s and 1970s. He is co-editor of the catalogue raisonné of John Hoyland’s paintings on canvas and since 2015 has been increasingly involved in the day-to-day and strategic functioning of The John Hoyland Estate. His publications include Mali Morris (Royal Academy, 2019), Stockwell Depot 1967–79 (Ridinghouse, 2015), John Panting: Sculpture (Sansom & Co, 2012). He co-curated the Arts Council touring exhibition Kaleidoscope: Colour and Sequence in 1960s British Art (2017–18). He has recently been awarded a second Paul Mellon Curatorial grant for a project on Frank Bowling and Sculpture, to be completed in 2022. Also forthcoming in 2022 are a monograph on Tim Scott and essays contributing to monographs on William Turnbull and Jeremy Moon.

Rakeb Sile co-founded Addis Fine Art with Mesai Haileleul creating the first white-cube gallery space for modern and contemporary art in Ethiopia. Since then, the business has grown to become one of the leading galleries in Africa establishing a prominent international platform for artists from the Horn of Africa. The gallery has spaces in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and London, having recently moved into expanded premises in London, opening a two-storey gallery space in the heart of Fitzrovia. With her background in management consulting, Sile was well placed to take charge of the gallery’s commercial operations; since 2016, they have participated in fairs in Africa and beyond, among them Frieze London and New York, The Armory Show and Art Basel. She was also recently chosen as one of Apollo Magazine's 40 Under 40 Africa in 2020, a project dedicated to forty of the most influential and talented people in the art world, born or based in Africa.

John Hawley is part of the Christie’s Old Master Paintings team in New York. Prior to this he held a curatorial position at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, collaborating on a number of exhibitions, including the groundbreaking Class Distinctions: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer (2015). He obtained degrees from the College of William and Mary (BA, 2008), Institute of Fine Arts at New York University (MA, 2010) and University of Virginia (PhD, 2015). A specialist in Dutch and Flemish art of the seventeenth century, John previously held positions at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia. He is the authority on the drawings of Cornelis Visscher (1628/29–1658) and has published extensively in Master Drawings, print quarterly, caa.reviews and various exhibition catalogues.