After I finished my history degree at Goldsmiths, I thought that was it for education. I stayed on in London and I picked up internships and contracts in the creative industry, starting with a fashion festival and then a design agency, before landing a freelance research role on a 1940s couture exhibition at the V&A. It instilled an interest in the museum and arts world and basically helped pave the way for me to get a fixed contract role at the National Portrait Gallery, cataloguing its collection of 20th-century photographs.
These roles not only showed me what type of work went into exhibition making in a public institution, but working alongside curators in a research capacity made me decide I wanted to carry on doing that sort of work. I also had a strong desire to do an MA in history of art.
If you work in a museum or gallery then the time you get to think about the matter is limited until you’re in a very senior role. I wanted the time to do this thinking. I treated my postgrad as a job. I was really focused on it. I was going to the library nine-to-five every day. It was really good to have that time to do the reading and specialise in photography. I carried on working one day a week at the National Portrait Gallery as a cataloguer and fortunately, soon after I had finished my master’s, I took on a full-time research position at the gallery and then later an assistant curator position.
I’ve been at Tate Britain for three years now and I often find I come back to what I learned during my master’s. I’m currently working on the Paul Nash exhibition and it’s really helped having an overview of the history of photography, so I can easily understand the photographs Nash made after being given a camera in 1931. Having a broad understanding of this history has helped me quickly see the significance of Nash’s contribution.
I know I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now without my master’s. Working in a public institution as a curator you have to be both practically and academically minded, and there’s no doubt the time I spent studying for my MA was what honed my scholarly credentials.
