Dr Robert James Sutton is a freelance lecturer and curator, and a research associate at the Patrick Heron Trust working on the catalogue raisonné of Heron’s paintings. He has taught at universities including Leicester, Oxford Brookes and Coventry and at NYU London.
Robert is primarily interested in the art and design of mid-to-late 20th century Britain, and has particular expertise in the work of Henry Moore and the public art of post-war Britain. He completed his doctoral thesis on ‘The Educational Roots of Henry Moore’s Public Works, 1938-50’ at the University of York and Tate Britain, where he contributed to the Tate research project Henry Moore: Sculptural Process and Public Identity and co-curated two room displays of Moore’s work. More recently, he supported the development of the exhibition Bill Brandt Henry Moore for the Yale Center for British Art and is currently working with the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery on a rehang of their 20th century collections.
His research is concerned with the memorial functions of artworks commissioned for the new public spaces of post-war Britain, with a particular focus on the works of Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Peter László Peri.
