Rachel Denniston

Curating the ‘Anti-Museum’: Women and the Occult Publics of Abstraction, 1910-1945

Supervisor: Dr Robin Schuldenfrei

Advisor: Dr Gavin Parkinson

Funded by the Tavolozza Foundation

Rachel Denniston is an art historian, writer, and curator with a special interest in how alternative spiritualities shape the interstices of art, architecture, and design in the modern period across Europe and the United States. Her work explores how art and space function more broadly to inform new ways of living, being, and finding meaning in modern life.

Her doctoral research at the Courtauld Institute of Art examines the influence of theosophy on the emergence of avant-garde abstraction, and the dissemination of modern art across borders from Europe to the United States, focusing on the efforts of three German-American, female collectors and curators Katherine Dreier, Galka Scheyer, and Hilla Rebay. 

She recently held a research residency at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and has worked in a curatorial capacity as an independent researcher and part of the curatorial team for the Jencks Foundation at the Cosmic House in London.