Penelope Curtis

Educated first in a state school and then at Oxford University, she took "Sculpture after Rodin" as the subject of her doctorate.[1]

In 1994 she took on the leadership of the sculpture collection at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds. She left in 2010 to take on the role of directing the Tate Britain art gallery.[2]

Curtis presenting at the Said Business School in 2011

In March 2015, it was announced that she would leave London's Tate Britain after five years in charge.[3]

Curtis had faced some criticism which some like Nick Serota and Portuguese colleagues had put down to misogyny, but that was not the reason for her departure. She had been concerned that the Tate had to put on exhibitions that had popular appeal because these exhibitions balanced the books given the national policy of free entry to museums, but this was not the whole reason either. Curtis said that she left because she was attracted by the opportunity of running the privately funded Gulbenkian Museum.[4] The Portuguese museum attracted only just over half the visitors as Tate Britain but it had ten curators and it was backed by a large and generous foundation.[4]

Curtis has been spending time trying to marry together the modern art collection at the adjacent Centre de Arte Moderna with the museum collection of 6,000 objects. Curtis has used the challenge to integrate the Islamic collection gathered from several Arabic countries in a new "crossings gallery" in 2018. Curtis notes that the new gallery will be the first substantial change in the museum since 1969.[4] Curtis has noted that with an annual budget of 500,000 Euros it will be necessary for the museum to concentrate of Portuguese culture rather than aspiring to an international collection.[5]