Karen Di Franco
Programme Leader, M.Litt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art)
School of Fine Art
Glasgow School of Art
Research Interests
Curation, Artists' Publishing, Feminisms, Archives, Conceptual Art History
Research Profile
Dr Karen Di Franco is Programme Leader of M. LItt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art. Her background includes teaching post-graduate students in curating, history of art, and writing, where she specialises in post-1960s feminist art practice, the materiality of artists’ publishing and the context of iteration and conceptualism in fiction writing and performance
Her PhD research titled Embodied Iteration: Materialising the Language of Writing and Performance in Women Artists’ Publishing, 1968–1979 was funded by the AHRC collaborative Doctoral Partnership and based between the University of Reading and Tate Britain (2015-2020).
With a background in digital archiving, as a curator Di Franco has organised exhibitions that explore the contexts of archives and pmore...
Dr Karen Di Franco is Programme Leader of M. LItt Curatorial Practice (Contemporary Art) at Glasgow School of Art. Her background includes teaching post-graduate students in curating, history of art, and writing, where she specialises in post-1960s feminist art practice, the materiality of artists’ publishing and the context of iteration and conceptualism in fiction writing and performance
Her PhD research titled Embodied Iteration: Materialising the Language of Writing and Performance in Women Artists’ Publishing, 1968–1979 was funded by the AHRC collaborative Doctoral Partnership and based between the University of Reading and Tate Britain (2015-2020).
With a background in digital archiving, as a curator Di Franco has organised exhibitions that explore the contexts of archives and publishing, with a focus on practices that emerge between text and performance, the page, and the body. Concerned with an inter-generational dialogue with these forms, these exhibitions challenge categorisations of archive, artwork, and ephemera. She has worked for public organisations such as Spike Island, the Contemporary Art Society and Book Works, and has been Programme Curator at Chelsea Space, Chelsea College of Arts, UAL since 2013.
Qualifications
2020: PhD, Tate Britain and University of Reading
2012: MA Contemporary Art Theory, Goldsmiths, University of London
2003: BA (Hons) Fine Art, University of the West of England
