Paul Greenhalgh

Greenhalgh has worked in most art sectors, including Schools of Art and Design, Museums and Galleries, and large scale Universities. He was educated at Smithills Grammar School in Bolton, the University of Reading and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

His posts have included teacher at the Royal College of Art; Head of Research at the V&A Museum in London (1994-2000); President of NSCAD University in Canada (2001-2006); President and Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art and Design, in Washington DC (2006-2010).[2] he subsequently returned to England to take up his post at the University of East Anglia, though remained an adjunct curator of European fine and decorative arts for the Corcoran.[2]

He practiced as a professional painter for a short while at the beginning of his career, before steadily moving into being a writer, teacher, and curator. He has curated many exhibitions, written many books, and taught internationally.

Greenhalgh is a specialist in the decorative arts and artistic movements from 1850 to 1940.[2]

• 2018 - Ceramic, Art and Civilization, 180,000 words, 230 plates, IN PRESS
• 2013 – L’Art Nouveau: La Revolution Décorative (Editor and principal author, catalogue for the exhibition of the same title, opening in Paris April 2013, 50,000 words, 230 plates, Gallerie Pinocothéque de Paris).
• 2011 – Fair World: A History of World’s Fairs and Expositions, 1851-2010(130,000 words, 230 plates, London, Papadakis)
• 2005 – The Modern Ideal: The Rise and Collapse of Idealism in the Visual Arts from the Enlightenment to Postmodernism 160,000 words, 120 plates,London and New York, V&A Publications and Abrams.
• 2002 - The Persistence of Craft: The Applied Arts Now (principal author andeditor), 100,000 words, 200 plates London and New York, A&C Black, Rutgers)
• 2000 - Art Nouveau 1890-1914 (principal author and editor), (London, New York, V&A, Abrams), 200,000 words, 400 plates. French and Japanese translations.
• 2000 - The Essential Art Nouveau (London and New York, V&A and Abrams) 10,000 words, 80 plates.
• 1993 - Quotations and Sources on Design and the Decorative Arts, 1800-1990 (Manchester, MUP), 80,000 words.
• 1990 - Modernism in Design (principal author and editor) (London, Reaktion), 85,000 words, 65 plates, Japanese edition 1997.
• 1989 - Ephemeral Vistas: Great Exhibitions, Expositions Universelles and World’s Fairs, 1851-1939 (Manchester, MUP), 130,000 words, 20 plates.

Greenhalgh has organised major temporary exhibitions, managing exhibition programmes and displaying permanent collections. As Head of Research at the Victoria & Albert Museum he had a leadership in or academic involvement with V&A exhibitions and collection displays. In 2000, when he curated 'Art Nouveau 1890-1914', which travelled to the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and the Metropolitan Museum in Tokyo. At the Corcoran Gallery, he created a large-scale exhibitions programme. These included Eadweard Muybridge; Richard Avedon’s Political Portraits; The American Evolution: Art and Society 1790 to the Present; The French Landscape: Realism to Modernism, 1840-1914; Re-Defined: Modern and Contemporary Works from the Permanent Collection. In 2011, the Corcoran simultaneously had two major exhibitions in London: John Singer Sargent and the Sea at the Royal Academy, and Edward Muybridge at Tate Britain. The Sainsbury Centre at UEA has had a string of major exhibitions.

2016 and ongoing - Advisory Council Winston Churchill Memorial Trust; 2017 and ongoing - Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; 2010 to 2015 - Chair of Art and Design in the government’s Research Excellence Framework (REF), the national body appointed to assess and audit research in the UK university sector; 2011 and ongoing - Chair Arts Advisory Committee, University of Edinburgh; 2001 and ongoing - Senior Honorary Fellow of Research, V&A Museum, London;