Kim Sloan

Curator of British Drawings and Watercolours before 1880 and Francis Finlay Curator of the Enlightenment Gallery

Drawings and Watercolours by British and Irish artists from 1580s to 1880s and curatorial responsibility for Room 1, Enlightenment: Discovery and Learning in the Eighteenth Century

Department: Prints and Drawings

Telephone: +44 (0)20 7323 8705
Email: ksloan @ thebritishmuseum.ac.uk

Kim Sloan studied art history at the University of Toronto before moving to London to do her Ph.D. on the teaching of drawing to non-professional artists in the 18th century (Westfield College,  University of London 1985).

She curated an exhibition on Alexander Cozens for the V&A in 1986, which travelled to the Art Gallery of Ontario with additional works by his son (The Poetry of Landscape: Alexander and John Robert Cozens. Yale, 1986). She worked for four years on the preparation of Sir Brinsley Ford's Grand Tour Archive www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk publication by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (completed by John Ingamells, 1997) before joining the British Museum as curator of British Drawings and Watercolours in 1992.

Her exhibitions at the British Museum have focused on Sir William Hamilton and his collections, on the department's magnificent collection of watercolours by Turner in the Lloyd Bequest and on works by amateurs and drawing masters, which developed ideas from her thesis. She was seconded to be Principal Curator in the creation of the Enlightenment Gallery from 2000 to 2003 and then returned to duties in the Prints and Drawings Department.

Current British Museum projects

Curator of the exhibition: A New World: England's first view of America in Room 5 (15 March - 17 June, 2007). This exhibition explores the work of the gentleman-artist John White who in the 1580s travelled on Walter Raleigh's voyages to 'Virginia' (now North Carolina) and made the earliest surviving watercolours of the flora, fauna and people of North America. The exhibition will then tour the Unite States of America: North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, NC (20 October 2007 - 13 January 2008); Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT (6 March - 1 June); Jamestown Settlement, VA (15 July - 17 October). The papers from the June 2007 conference, European Visions: American Voices will appear online on the British Museum website as an Official Research Publication.

In 2008, will be joint curator with Stephen Lloyd of the exhibition: The Intimate Portrait: Drawing, Miniatures and Pastelsfrom Ramsay to Lawrence. It will be co-organised with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, where it will be on display 25 October 2008 - 1 February 2009. It will be shown in Room 90, the Prints and Drawings gallery at the British Museum, 5 March - 31 May 2009.

Previous British Museum projects

Principal Curator of the Enlightenment Gallery, permanent gallery, opened 2003 (Room 1)

Curator of the exhibition: A Noble Art: Amateur Artists and Drawing Mastersc.1600-1800, 2000 (Room 90)

Curator of the exhibition: J.M.W.Turner: Watercolours from the R.W. Lloyd Bequest, 1998 (Room 90)

Joint curator with Ian Jenkins (Greek and Roman Antiquities) of the exhibition: Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, 1996 (Room 5)

External fellowships/ honorary positions/ membership of professional bodies

Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London

Member of the Advisory Council of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Leverhulme Fellow at the National Portrait Gallery, London (September 2007 - January 2008)

Member of the Walpole Society, Beckford Society, American and British Societies for Eighteenth Century Studies

Publications

K. Sloan, A New World: England's first view of America (London, British Museum Press, 2007)

K. Sloan, Enlightenment: Discovering the World in the Eighteenth Century, with A. Burnett (London, British Museum Press, 2003)

K. Sloan, A Noble Art: Amateur Artists and Drawing Masters c.1600-1800 (London, British Museum Press, 2000)

K. Sloan, J.M.W.Turner: Watercolours from the R.W. Lloyd Bequest  (London, British Museum Press, 1998)

K. Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, with I. Jenkins (London, British Museum Press, 1996)