COURTESY IWAN BAAN, SERPENTINE GALLERIES, AND THE ARTIST
After serving as a curator of contemporary British art since 1999, Lizzie Carey-Smith, will leave her role as senior curator at Tate Britain to join Serpentine Galleries as head of programs. The shift comes shortly after the Tate announced that it had appointed Alex Farquharson as its new director. During her career at Tate, Carey-Smith participated in various jury deliberations and oversaw the Turner Prize Retrospective in 2007.
Notably, Carey-Smith curated the Art Now series for ten years (where she organized shows by artists like Ed Atkins and Mark Tichner), and editions of the Turner Prize since 2002. In 2009, Carey-Smith accompanied curator and Palais de Tokyo cofounder, Nicholas Bourriaud when he curated Alternmodern as part of the Tate Triennial.
As quoted by Artforum, co-directors of the Serpentine Galleries, Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans Ulrich Obrist said that Carey-Thomas’ “experience as a curator and a commissioner of new work, together with her work with emerging artists, ensures that she will make a major contribution to the Serpentine’s programs.”