David Elliott (curator)

David Stuart Elliott (born 29 April 1949) is a British-born art gallery and museum curator and writer about modern and contemporary art.

He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School. While studying Modern History at the University of Durham, he organised 'Germany in Ferment: Art and Society in Germany 1900-1933' (1970) a group of art, photography and design exhibitions that also included film and performance programmes. After showing in Durham, this travelled to the Mappin Art Gallery Sheffield and the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery. He then worked as an Art Assistant at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery before studying History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

Elliott worked as a regional art and exhibitions officer at the Arts Council of Great Britain, from 1973 to 1976 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, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union as well as mainstream western art.

In 1995, he co-curated for the Hayward Gallery, London a large traveling 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'.

He was then Director of the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art) in 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].

Between 2001 and 2006, Elliott was the first director of Tokyo's Mori Art Museum, a large privately endowed museum devoted to contemporary - particularly Asian - art, architecture and design.

During 2007 he was the first Director of Istanbul Modern.

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