In 2023, Elena Crippa joined London’s Whitechapel Gallery as Head of Exhibitions to help shape and deliver the artistic programme. She was previously Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art at Tate Britain, where her exhibitions included All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life (2018), Frank Bowling (2019), Paula Rego (2021) and the 2022 commission Hew Locke: The Procession. Working at Tate for ten years, Elena linked curatorial and research activities and led acquisition strategies, collection displays, and the 2023 collection rehang.
Internationally, Elena toured exhibitions on artists associated with the ‘School of London’ at 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, PalaisPopulaire, Berlin (2019).
Before joining Tate, Elena was a lecturer and pathway leader for the MRes in Exhibition Studies at Central Saint Martins. She conducted her doctoral research as part of the Leverhulme-funded Tate Research project ‘Art School Educated’ (2009–14). Publications include monographs on the work of Manon de Boer, Frank Bowling and Paula Rego and Exhibition, Design, Participation, ‘an Exhibit’ 1957 (Afterall, 2016).
