Paul Goodwin

Paul Goodwin is a British independent curator, urban theorist, academic and researcher, whose projects particularly focus on black and diaspora artists and visual cultures. He is Director at the Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN), University of the Arts London. Background Goodwin was curator at Tate Britain, from 2008 to 2012, where he directed the Cross Cultural Programme, using exhibitions, international conferences, workshops, talks and live art events to explore migration and globalisation in contemporary British art. He was Consultant Curator for the international exhibition Afro Modern: Journeys Through the Black Atlantic that took place at Tate Liverpool between January and April 2010, and programmed the accompanying Global Exhibitions symposium, co-editing a book based on papers from the symposium entitled Contemporary Art and the African Diaspora (Liverpool University Press). He worked with artists from the Black British art movement of the 1980s, notably Sonia Boyce, Chila Kumari Burman and Lubaina Himid, and among his concerns has been the issue that only a small percentage of the Tate's collection of British art is on display at any one time, reflecting the personal taste of curators or trends of the time; as he has said: "One of the factions of Britain which hasn't been very well represented until recently is the work of Black and Asian artists and that's one of the things that I really try to address in my work.” From 2013 to 2016 Goodwin was Joint Chair with Sonia Boyce of Black Art and Design at the University of the Arts London (UAL), being appointed professor in 2014, and he went on to be Chair of Contemporary Art and Urbanism and Director of TrAIN, UAL's Research Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation.