Biography
Residency Dates: 14 November - 18 November
Anna Reid is a historian of art and a curator. Her research readdresses modern and contemporary British histories - in their global contexts - with a focus on the interwar period and on contexts of new geological and physiological knowledge. Her doctoral research titled The Nest of Wild Stones: A Geological Way of Seeing in the British Landscape, reread the work of Paul Nash in the context of vital geophysical discoveries of the 1930s and as a resource for artists and writers working in the contemporary context of unfolding ecological knowledge. This work is published with The Dark Mountain Project; Visual Culture in Britain, British Art Studies and presented as part of the major conference and publication The Landscape Now.
From 2019-21 Anna worked as Head of Research and as Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, where, for example, and in the context of the global pandemic, she devised the international conference British Art and Natural Forces. Anna is a research fellow as part of the Princeton University Art Hx project, addressing visual and medical legacies of British colonialism. Her work is shaped by her collaboration and curatorial work with contemporary artists such as Lucy Skaer, Elizabeth Price, Hetain Patel and Mathieu Abonnenc, including as Director and Curator at the art organization, Pavilion from 2006-16. Anna gained her PhD with the support of the AHRC Centre for doctoral research at Northumbria University. She holds an MA Goldsmiths College, an MA Courtauld Institute and she gained her BA History of Art at the University of Cambridge. Her current research readdresses and documents 1930s British Surrealism with reference to a context of innovation in the life sciences and as part of a global Surrealist movement.
