Elena Crippa is a specialist in modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on post-war and contemporary British art from a transnational perspective.
Elena joined the Courtauld in 2024 from the Whitechapel Gallery, where she was Head of Exhibitions. Previously, she was Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, where her projects explored transnational and transcultural intersections. She curated the retrospective exhibitions Frank Bowling (2019) and Paula Rego (2021) and the group exhibition All Too Human, Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life (2018). She also curated the 2022 commission Hew Locke: The Procession and several research-based displays, including Basic Design (2013), Jo Spence (2015), Stan Firm Inna Inglan: Black Diaspora in London 1960–70s (2017), and Kim Lim: Carving and Printing (2020–21). Working at Tate for over ten years, she initiated projects that bridged curatorial and research activities and led acquisition strategies, collection displays and the 2023 collection rehang.
Internationally, Elena curated Mariana Telleria’s first solo exhibition in Rosario, Argentina, and Manon de Boer’s Cinema of Sound at Loop Festival Barcelona (2011). She toured exhibitions on artists associated with the ‘School of London’ to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2016); Museo Picasso, Malaga (2017); AROS Kunstmuseum, Aarhus (2017-18); The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow (2019) and Chiostro del Bramante, Roma (2019). She co-curated Objects of Wonder with Daniel Slater for PalaisPopulaire, Berlin (2019). She was a member of the International Jury of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2024).
Elena studied at Università degli Studi di Trieste, Italy, and Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, before obtaining her MA in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art, London. She was the recipient of a Leverhulme Trust-funded Collaborative PhD award (London Consortium and Tate Research Department). She completed her doctorate working as part of the Tate Research Project ‘Art School Educated: Curriculum Development and Institutional Change in UK Art Schools, 1960-2010’ (2009–13). She was a lecturer on the MRes Exhibition Studies, Central Saint Martins, UAL, and has been a visiting lecturer and external examiner at the Royal College of Art. She is a member of the Advisory Council of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
Elena edited and contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues on the work of Manon de Boer, Frank Bowling and Paula Rego, among other artists, and is the author of Sonia Boyce (Artists Series, Tate Publishing, 2024). She has contributed essays and articles to British Art Studies, IDEA Arts + Society, Manifesta Journal and Tate Etc. She authored and co-edited Exhibition, Design, Participation: ‘An Exhibit’ 1957 and Related Projects (Afterall Books, Exhibitions Series, 2016) and contributed several articles and book chapters on artistic practices and networks that germinated in the art school, including in London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent, and Ephemeral Networks, 1960–1980 (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2018). She is co-editing a special issue of British Art Studies on collage, 1945–now (forthcoming, 2026).
