Past Events

Curating During COVID

ECRN Events – Tamsin Silvey, Giulia Calvi, Lucy Moore, Emily Burns

  • 29 June 2021
  • 2:00 – 3:00 pm

This event will explore developing and gaining curatorial experience during the pandemic and what applying for jobs in the museum sector might look like after COVID.

Drawing on the experiences of early-career museum workers from several institutions, the event will touch upon issues such as delayed and adapted exhibitions, creative ways to gain experience while museums are closed and how to advocate for a fair workplace as an early career curator.

This event will appeal to ECRs interested in a career in museums as well as those more broadly interested in learning more about the outlook for the sector moving forward.

About the speakers

  • Head-and-shoulders portrait of Tamsin Silvey

    Tamsin Silvey is Cultural Programme Curator at Historic England, the public body that looks after England’s historic environment. She specialises in developing and curating contemporary photography projects, and is a PhD candidate within the History of Art School at Birkbeck, University of London, interrogating how conflict photographs have been curated within temporary exhibitions at British institutions from 2010 to 2020.

  • headshot of Giulia Calvi against stone building

    Giulia Calvi is from Italy and studied philosophy at King’s College London, where she developed an interest in aesthetics. She then moved on to a Masters in Curating the Art Museum at the Courtauld Institute of Art and will graduate in October. She is currently busy co-curating the MA final-year exhibition Both Sides of Here and undertaking a work placement at the National Gallery. Giulia is most passionate about the way legacies of difficult heritage can shape collective memory and societal narratives.

  • Lucy Moore's headshot with lake in background.

    Lucy Moore is a project curator at Leeds Museums & Galleries and co-founder of Fair Museum Jobs. She recently led Leeds Museums & Galleries’ First World War programme, which reached almost 2.9 million people. Her first job ever was in a chip shop, and first museum job was selling National Trust memberships. She's also worked as a butcher, a care assistant, selling posh soap and in telesales. She is also studying for a PhD in ninth-century money at the University of York.

  • Headshot of Emily Burns against brick wall.

    Emily Burns is a curator at the Watts Gallery-Artists' Village and art historian specialising in British art and collecting, with a particular interest in portraiture. She is currently editor of the forthcoming Jordaens Van Dyck Journal, and was previously Vivmar Curatorial Fellow at the National Gallery (2018–20) and Assistant Curator at the National Portrait Gallery (2013–18). Emily holds a doctorate on art and collecting in England during the Civil War and Interregnum, c.1640–1660 (University of Nottingham, 2018), and remains engaged in research into mid-seventeenth-century painting. She was co-convenor of the Paul Mellon Centre's Early Career Researchers Network between 2018 and 2020, and has contributed essays and catalogue entries on Trewithen House, Raynham Hall and Petworth House for the Paul Mellon Centre’s Art & the Country House project.