Dr Cliff Lauson FRSA
is Director of Exhibitions at Somerset House, London overseeing the exhibitions, commissions, and special projects aspects of the cultural programme. He was formerly Senior Curator at the Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, having organised major exhibitions of work by Matthew Barney, Bridget Riley, Martin Creed, Ernesto Neto, Tracey Emin, and David Shrigley and the critically-acclaimed group exhibitions Strange Clay, Light Show and Space Shifters. In addition, he has curated numerous exhibitions of artists in the HENI Project Space, including Dineo Seshee Bopape, Emmanuelle Lainé, Kate Cooper, and Adapt to Survive: Notes from the Future. He has also commissioned artworks and projects across the wider Southbank Centre site.
Independently, he recently curated Rana Begum: Dappled Light at Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, which toured nationally and internationally.
Cliff was a 2015-6 Fellow of the Clore Leadership Programme, and undertook the secondment component of his fellowship at renowned visual effects house Industrial Light & Magic, London. In 2020, he co-hosted the Between Two Curators podcast, and is a trained life and executive coach.
Cliff was previously Assistant Curator at Tate Modern, working on exhibitions such as Frida Kahlo, Mark Rothko, Per Kirkeby, and World as a Stage. He completed his PhD at University College London titled In Vancouver as Elsewhere: Modernism and the So-Called ‘Vancouver School’. Prior to moving to London in 2004, he was Education and Public Programmes Coordinator at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Cliff contributes interviews and essays to a number of international exhibition catalogues, and guest lectures at art colleges and universities. He currently serves on the steering group for the Artfund Curatorial Diversity Programme, is a former trustee of Film and Video Umbrella, and a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts.
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