PAC LA - Women Curators

Women Curators Panel Discussion

Beverly Hills Public Library Auditorium

2nd Floor

Monday, March 2, 7:00 PM

Join the Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles, with support from Eastman Museum LA, for a panel discussion featuring an intergenerational group of curators as the final installment of PAC LA’s Year of the Woman series. At different stages of their careers, Sarah Greenough, Emilia Mickevicius, and Britt Salvesen will come together for a conversation moderated by Allison Pappas, about the shape of the field and the role of curatorial practice in photography over the last four decades. In that period, the medium went from being collected by just a handful of museums to being viewed as one of the most popular and incisive forms of contemporary art in institutions of all sizes around the country—holding relevance that will presumably continue to grow more critical and complex with future social and technological changes.

Sarah Greenough is senior curator and head of the department of photographs at the National Gallery of Art. In 1978, she was awarded a Samuel H. Kress Fellowship at the National Gallery, where she worked until her retirement earlier this year. In 1990, she became the founding curator of the department of photographs and has been responsible for establishing and growing the National Gallery's collection of photographs. During her time at the National Gallery she organized numerous exhibitions, including Alfred Stieglitz (1983), On the Art of Fixing a Shadow: 150 Years of Photography (1989), Modern Art and America: Alfred Stieglitz and His New York Galleries (2001), André Kertész (2005), Irving Penn: Platinum Prints (2005), Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans" (2009), and Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg (2010), all of which traveled to museums around the world. Greenough received her PhD and MA from University of New Mexico where she studied with the noted photographic historian Beaumont Newhall.

Emilia Mickevicius is the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, a joint appointment between the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona and Phoenix Art Museum. In her role, she primarily draws from the CCP's collection to craft exhibitions for audiences in Phoenix. Her recent projects include Muscle Memory: Lens on the Body, Funny Business: Photography and Humor, and exhibitions on photographers Richard Avedon and Laura Aguilar. From 2019 to 2023 Emmy worked in the Photography department at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where she contributed to numerous exhibitions of work by historical and living artists. She received her PhD from Brown University in 2019.

Britt Salvesen is Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Departments at LACMA. Recent curatorial projects include Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film (with Staci Steinberger, 2024–25) and City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907 (with Leah Lehmbeck and Vanessa R. Schwartz, 2022). Prior to joining LACMA in 2009, she was director and chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona. She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and her PhD from the University of Chicago.

Allison Pappas is the Jane P. Watkins Assistant Curator of Photography at the Morgan Library & Museum. She is co-authoring the book Framing the Field: Photography's Histories in American Institutions, which explores the institutional establishment of the field of photography from the 1970s through 1990s through long-form interviews and archival research. Previously, Pappas was Assistant Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She holds an MA in the History of Art from Williams College and a PhD in the History of Art and Architecture from Brown University.

This event is free and open to the public.

Registration required.

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Host or Publisher Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles