Exciting news from Los Angeles!
From an article in the LA Times written by Suzanne Muchnic, Times Staff Writer:
Charlotte Cotton, a British photography curator and writer who plunged into edgy contemporary projects after 12 years of curatorial work at the venerable Victoria & Albert Museum in London, has been appointed department head and curator of photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
She will join the museum’s staff June 1, succeeding the late Robert A. Sobieszek and interim department head Tim B. Wride.
Cotton, 36, who was born in the Cotswolds in England, studied photography at the University of Sussex in Brighton. She was a curator of photographs at the Victoria & Albert from 1993 to 2004, organizing many exhibitions of historic and contemporary photographs and writing extensively. After leaving the museum, she became head of programming at the Photographers’ Gallery, the only publicly funded gallery in London devoted to photography.
In 2005 Cotton moved to New York, where she organized a cultural program for Art + Commerce, an agency that represents many leading photographers; taught at colleges and universities in the area; and continued to write about photography.
At LACMA, Cotton will return to museum work, taking charge of a department that was founded in 1984 and has an eclectic collection of about 6,000 photographs.”
Cotton’s publication “The Photograph As Contemporary Art” (Thames & Hudson’s World of Art Series, 2004) was one of two essential books about contemporary photography that Darius Himes recommended to photographers to sduring his presentation as a part the panel “Publishing the Photographic Book” at Review Santa Fe this past weekend. (The second was Stephen Shore’s “The Nature of Photographs” (Phaidon, 2006).
Cotton is the Juror for the upcoming exhibition “UP AND NOW: The 12th Annual Photographic Competition Exhibition” at the Photography Center Northwest; deadline for digital submissions on CD-Rom only is THIS FRIDAY at the close of business (PDT). Click here to learn about the competition, how to apply, cash awards and more.
To download the official LACMA Press Release announcing Cotton’s appointment, click here.
To read the announcement as published in the Los Angeles Times (5/16/07), click here.
Marketing Photos with Mary Virginia Swanson 