Our Curator
Beth Greenacre
Beth Greenacre has been curating and directing The Sunderland Collection Art Programme since its inception. She has a great sensitivity and respect for the artistic process and for individual artists’ journeys.
Beth’s experience is across histories and geographies. She works very closely with artists, and is mindful of both their legacy and the legacy of cultural heritage in general.
Curating The Sunderland Collection Art Programme
I have always gravitated to art, art history and artists as a way of understanding our world around us, and as a means of looking at the world from different perspectives and so when I was invited to curate an art programme in response to the The Sunderland Collection I was immensely excited about the possibilities. Who better to invite to engage with a world-class collection of maps, that by definition enable the understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world, than artists?
The Sunderland Collection, Art Programme invites artists to spend time and to engage with, and respond to, the objects that have been collected with care and integrity for over 35 years. Timing is everything, and today we find ourselves in a moment when intercultural understanding and respect is of crucial importance. The decision to provide access to the collection and in return to open up conversations around themes, such as globalisation, identity, and nationhood is vital.
Similarly it has been incredibly exciting to watch artists responses when first viewing the maps, weather that be to the artistry and processes, to the materials or the historical moments in which they were made. As the Art Programme unfolds I am excited to work with emerging and established artists alike, working across mediums and processes and to support their enquiries into the treasures within The Sunderland Collection.
The experience, I hope will not only build capacity for cultural awareness, but also our own understanding of the collection. I am excited about sharing the content with as wide an audience as possible on the digital home of the collection and through partnerships with others. Similarly I hope that the artist’s responses to the Collection enable us all to look at the outstanding objects of cultural and historical importance, and consider the legacy of the collection, afresh.
Biography
With over 20 years experience in the art market, Beth Greenacre is an experienced and trusted curator, advisor and consultant. Working with private clients, family offices and corporate collections, Beth builds art collections with personal, cultural and critical meaning, as well as market significance.
Soon after graduating from The Courtauld Institute of Art, Beth became the curator of the David Bowie Collection, an important and extensive collection at the heart of which, was a remarkable group of many of the most important British artists of the 20th Century, including Frank Auerbach, Peter Lanyon and Graham Sutherland.
The collection also encompassed Post-war and Contemporary art, Surrealism, Outsider art, African art and Memphis furniture. As well as co-curating numerous exhibitions with Bowie, she oversaw the sale of selected work from his collection at Sotheby's in 2016.
Beth is curator and advisor at SXSW London; exhibitions for the inaugural festival include Beautiful Collisions which brings together contemporary artists whose work reflects the significant impact of artists from the Caribbean diaspora on British art and culture. The exhibition celebrates how the Caribbean has enriched Britain. While the artists remind us of the historical injustices inflicted on the region and its people, they make space for joy, healing, and radical care. And Damien Roach’s Grounding an immersive audio-visual installation using cutting-edge Generative AI and quantum physics to explore the transient, fleeting, and ever-changing nature of land, matter, and the environment via the equally unstable ecology of the networked digital image.
Outside of The Sunderland Collection Art Programme other recent curatorial projects have included LIVING MEMORY: Louise Bourgeois, Nicolas Godin and Gideon Rubin, 2023. Housed in the All Saints Chapel, the exhibition examined memory and materiality in relation to existential questions beyond the physical. The same year Beth curated I’ll Be Your Mirror as part of Vortic Curated in partnership with The Courtauld.
Beth is Chairperson of the Courtauld Association Committee, an Advisory Board member of She CURAtes: The Residency and on the Executive Committee of The Association of Women in the Arts. Greenacre also sits on New Contemporaries 75th Anniversary Development Committee and The Whitechapel’s Art Icon 2025 Committee.