Paul Greenhalgh


Paul Greenhalgh is a writer, historian, curator of art and design. He is currently Director of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and Professor of Art and Museum Studies positions he has held since 2011.

Background

Greenhalgh has worked in most art sectors, including Schools of Art and Design, Museums and Galleries, and large scale Universities. He was educated at Smithills Grammar School in Bolton, the University of Reading and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
His posts have included teacher at the Royal College of Art; Head of Research at the V&A Museum in London ; President of NSCAD University in Canada ; President and Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design, in Washington DC. he subsequently returned to England to take up his post at the University of East Anglia, though remained an adjunct curator of European fine and decorative arts for the Corcoran.
He practiced as a professional painter for a short while at the beginning of his career, before steadily moving into being a writer, teacher, and curator. He has curated many exhibitions, written many books, and taught internationally.
Greenhalgh is a specialist in the decorative arts and artistic movements from 1850 to 1940.

Publications

Greenhalgh has organised major temporary exhibitions, managing exhibition programmes and displaying permanent collections. As Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum he had a leadership in or academic involvement with V&A exhibitions and collection displays. In 2000, when he curated 'Art Nouveau 1890-1914', which travelled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Metropolitan Museum in Tokyo. At the Corcoran Gallery, he created a large-scale exhibitions programme. These included Eadweard Muybridge; Richard Avedon’s Political Portraits; The American Evolution: Art and Society 1790 to the Present; The French Landscape: Realism to Modernism, 1840-1914; Re-Defined: Modern and Contemporary Works from the Permanent Collection. In 2011, the Corcoran simultaneously had two major exhibitions in London: John Singer Sargent and the Sea at the Royal Academy, and Edward Muybridge at Tate Britain. The Sainsbury Centre at UEA has had a string of major exhibitions.

Other positions and activities

2016 and ongoing - Advisory Council Winston Churchill Memorial Trust;
2017 and ongoing - Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts;
2010 to 2015 - Chair of Art and Design in the government’s Research Excellence Framework, the national body appointed to assess and audit research in the UK university sector;
2011 and ongoing - Chair Arts Advisory Committee, University of Edinburgh;
2001 and ongoing - Senior Honorary Fellow of Research, V&A Museum, London;