Lara Goodband has over 25 years’ experience as an art curator in galleries, museums and unusual places and spaces. She is currently Contemporary Art Curator and Programmer at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery in Exeter, a position funded by Arts Council England.
She works with artists to curate new artwork inspired by RAMM’s collections such as Michelle Williams Gamaker’s film ‘The Silver Wave’ inspired by RAMM’s Arctic collections and Joy Gregory’s ‘The Sweetest Thing’ inspired by RAMM’s Combesatchfield textile and Exeter’s sugar trade.
She is currently curating ‘Earth Spells: Art in the Anthropocene’, which will include new work by Emma Hart, Grace Ndiritu, Florence Peake, and Lucy Stein, inspired by Elizabeth Webb’s (the ‘white witch of Dartmoor’), cauldron.
‘Earth Spells’ continues Lara’s curatorial practice focusing on the climate crisis. She co-curated the exhibition ‘Offshore: Artists Explore the Sea’ for Hull 2017 and ‘Sea Garden’ in 2019, which included Bryony Gillard’s new film made in response to RAMM’s nineteenth-century seaweed collections in dialogue with film and photography by Dorothy Cross, photographs by Susan Derges and collage by Lucy Skaer, amongst other artists.
Lara studied English Literature/History of Art at the University of York before a diploma in Fine Art and then an MA in History of Art at the University of Manchester. She is a Research Associate at the University of Exeter and an Associate of the Museums Association (AMA).
