David Elliott

Who is David Elliott?

David Stuart Elliott is a British-born art gallery and museum curator and writer about modern and contemporary art.

He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School. After studying Modern History at the University of Durham, and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art Elliott worked as an exhibitions officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain, after which he served as director of the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford from 1976 to 1996. Elliott's programme at Oxford included exhibitions of art from Latin America, Asia, South Africa, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Elliott was then Director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from 1996 to 2001. From 1998 to 2004, he was President of CIMAM [the International Committee of ICOM for Museums of Modern and Contemporary Art]. In the 1995, he co-curated for the Hayward Gallery, London a large travelling exhibition 'Art and Power" exploring the relationship of art with the totalitarian regimes in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. His catalogue essays for this were gathered together and republished in 'History Today'.