Susanna Brown is a curator and writer specialising in photography, fashion, and portraiture.
Susanna has curated acclaimed exhibitions at twenty venues around the world. Her recent exhibitions include ‘Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’ (V&A Museum in London), ‘A Timeless Allure: The Photographic Art of George Hoyningen-Huene’ (Grisebach gallery in Berlin), ‘Horst: Photographer of Style’ (V&A Museum), ‘Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography’ (V&A Museum), and ‘Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton’ (V&A Museum).
‘Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’, curated by Susanna, was staged in the V&A Museum in London in late 2019/early 2020 and attracted 196,849 visitors. It was a huge success, is now on international tour, and received five star reviews….’The sheer joy of walking around the show…’, ’Vibrant and upbeat…’, ’A bracing full body immersion…’.
She lectures and teaches and has been a juror for awards including the Hyères International Festival of Fashion and Photography and the Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography. She is the author of five books.
Susanna studied at Wimbledon School of Art, Bristol University and The Courtauld Institute of Art (where she subsequently lectured). For more than a decade she was Curator of Photography, and later Senior Curator, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The V&A began acquiring photographs in 1852 and it is home to a world-class collection of 800,000 photographs and 6,000 cameras spanning the history of the medium. Susanna was part of the team of specialists caring for the collection, making new acquisitions, producing exhibitions and creating the V&A Photography Centre.
She left the V&A Museum in 2021 in order to pursue an independent curatorial career.