Laura Smith

DRAF Broadcasts: Podcast with Laura Smith

Having worked as a Curator at Tate St Ives for many years before moving to Whitechapel Gallery, Laura Smith has a good understanding of the benefits of building relationships with local audiences. Her curatorial approach is one that foregrounds good social relations between everyone involved in making, hanging and experiencing an exhibition. Collaboration and shared experience are important to her, as it is through creating this sense of community and trust that you can really challenge audiences (from 8:33). 

As Smith states; "If we can care for each other, it makes the making of that exhibition a positive experience for everybody with vital and beneficial conversations, rather than a stressful encounter" (28:32).

David Roberts Art Foundation works with the David Roberts Collection, currently through collaboration and partnerships with institutions around the UK. In part, it was due to Whitechapel Gallery having a ten year history of hosting external collections, ranging from public, private, to corporate, and Smith’s experience of working with the Tate Collection that led to her being invited on this podcast. She discusses various approaches to working with collections, including how it can open up research, the importance of bringing works that don’t usually get shown into the public focus, commissioning short stories in response to a collection's narrative or working with guest selectors (from 20:48). 
 

BIO

Laura Smith was appointed Curator of Whitechapel Gallery in February 2018, where, among others, she has worked on the first UK survey show for Elmgreen & Dragset and with Helen Cammock, who won the 2017-19 Max Mara Art Prize for Women and was a co-winner of the 2019 Turner Prize. Prior to the Whitechapel Gallery, Laura was Curator at Tate St Ives, where she was responsible for a series of international historic and contemporary projects by artists including Rebecca Warren, Jessica Warboys, Linder, Marlow Moss, R.H. Quaytman, Bridget Riley, Lucy Stein, Nashashibi/Skaer, as well as group exhibitions such as Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings (2018), Turner Prize 2016 (2016) and Images Moving Out onto Space (2015). 

Laura writes extensively on modern and contemporary art. Most recently she has contributed a chapter to Oxford University Press' Virginia Woolf Reader on Woolf's influence on the visual arts, an essay on Lisa Brice to accompany her solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery, and a forthcoming monograph on Eileen Agar - soon to be published by Eiderdown Books.

Want to hear more? Be sure to give Episode 2 of the DRAF Broadcasts: Podcast  as listen, where Joe Hill, Director of Towner Eastbourne, has been invited to talk about approaches to working with a collection, and turning the museum into a more social space. 

Have questions, comments or want to see more of what DRAF does? Reach us via davidrobertsartfoundation.com, @draf_art and subscribe to our newsletter!