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Helena Reckitt is a curator and researcher with extensive international experience in developing curatorial and critical research projects that focus on the overlapping realms of Art, Curating, Feminism and Sexual Politics; Affect & Relationality; and Curatorial Education.  

Her research explores the undetonated potential of earlier moments of cultural and political radicalism, particularly those from the feminist and queer past. Having played a key role in defining, and arguing for the importance of, feminist and queer perspectives on art, theory and activism, recently Reckitt has focused on identifying feminisms that are under-represented within the Anglo-American canon. She explores why these feminisms have been elided, and stages research projects that revisit and reignite them through forms of translation, re-enactment, annotation, and collective reading. Drawing on theories of social reproduction and affect, her research examines the sexual politics of artistic and curatorial labour, including the implications of curators and curatorial students being interpellated as feminized. Connecting these research areas are the numerous exhibitions and discursive events that she has initiated that explore art and curating’s generative potential and relational dimensions.

Her previous roles include Senior Curator of Programmes, the Power Plant, Toronto (2006 – 2010); Senior Director of Exhibitions and Education, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA (2002 – 2005); Head of Talks/Deputy Director of Talks, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1990 – 1998); and Associate Commissioning Editor, Film and Performance Studies, Routledge, London (1988 – 1990).  As an independent curator she has developed projects for Nuit Blanche, City of Toronto; Flux Night, Atlanta; Oakville Galleries, Ontario; Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto; and the ICA, Raven Row, SPACE and The Showroom, London.

Teaching

Prior to arriving at Goldsmiths, Helena served as an adjunct professor for the graduate programme in Art History at York University in Toront, and the Atlanta College of Art and Emory University in Georgia. She was the Clark Collection Critic and Curator in Residence at the University of Victoria in New Zealand.

Professional Projects

Helena is a member and former Board Chair (2011-17) of the Women’s Art Library at Goldsmiths, a member of the Centre for Feminist Research, and an editorial board member for the Goldsmiths Press. She is a board member and Acting Chair for Electra in London. She has served as a consultant or juror for organizations including the Creative Capital Foundation, MCAD/McKnight Foundation, Kentucky Arts Council, City of Toronto, Ontario College of Art and Design, and C Magazine. Her exhibitions and programmes have been supported by grants from public, private and government agencies including the Arts Council of England, National Endowment for the Arts, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Arts, Jack Weinbaum Family Foundation, Bickel Foundation, French Cultural Consul, Goethe Institute, Danish Arts Agency, Mondriaan Foundation, Japan Foundation, Creative New Zealand, and the Canada Council for the Arts. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Curatorial Studies, is a cofounder of Feminist Curators United (fCu), and is a member of IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art.

She has written for magazines including Art Papers, C Magazine, New York Arts Magazine, Art Asia Pacific, frieze, and the Times Higher Education Supplement, for the academic periodicals Art Journal, Reading Room, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies, and for books published by Routledge, Manchester University Press, Liverpool University Press, the University of Minnesota Press, Calvert 22, and the Whitechapel Gallery.