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Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art

Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art at SLAM since 2010, recently curated “Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape” (2023). He also curated the 2024 exhibition, “Matisse and the Sea,” which examines the significance of the sea across Modernist artist Henri Matisse’s career.

Kelly has published extensively on 19th- and early 20th-century French art, including the recent book “Théodore Rousseau and the Rise of the Modern Art Market” (Bloomsbury, 2021). Additionally, he has published essays in the exhibition catalogues “Reckoning with Millet’s ‘Man with a Hoe’ ” (Getty Art Museum, 2023), “Monet: the Late Years” (Kimbell Art Museum, 2019), “Inspiration Matisse” (Kunsthalle, Mannheim, 2019), “Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market” (National Gallery, London, 2015) and “Becoming Van Gogh” (Denver Art Museum, 2012). In recent years, he has also written on American Abstract Expressionism, including essays in “Monet/Mitchell” (Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2022) and “Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting” (Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 2023) and about contemporary African American artists, including Kehinde Wiley and Oliver Lee Jackson.

Kelly worked previously at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. He received an undergraduate degree from the University of Cambridge and a doctorate from Oxford University, where he also taught art history.

Notable media appearances and mentions

Television and video

Recent and upcoming SLAM exhibitions

Simon Kelly, curator of modern and contemporary art