About

Marcelle Joseph

an American-born independent curator, artist advisor, collector, writer, residency founder and patron based in the United Kingdom.

Across all of her activities, she is committed to supporting and empowering women and queer artists.

CONTACT

Email: marcelleraejoseph@gmail.com

Mobile: +44 7971 580 572

Curatorial

Since 2011, Joseph has produced and curated over 50 exhibitions in the UK and the rest of Europe, featuring the work of over 400 international artists. Her curatorial work focuses on gender and the performative construction of identity with an emphasis on material-led artistic practices. In 2022, Joseph co-curated her first museum exhibition in the United States at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles titled ‘The Condition of Being Addressable’.

advisory

In 2026, Joseph launched an invitation-only bespoke artist advisory programme for women and queer artists. This service is geared toward artists at any stage of their career who want to accelerate or reposition their career through direct, curated access to her established network of collectors, institutions, commericial galleries, residency providers, and writers. Joseph works with no more than a handful of artists at any time for a six or nine month period, giving each of them direct supported feedback with curatorial and collector insight into their practice, strategic mapping of their career, more visibility with key players in the contemporary art world, and a bespoke road map for them to execute even after the initial advisory period.

Collecting

Joseph collects artworks by early-career women artists under the collecting partnership, GIRLPOWER Collection (totalling 50 works), as well as more generally as part of the Marcelle Joseph Collection (totalling 350 works). The overwhelming majority of the artworks in her collections were made by early-career women and queer artists at the time of their acquistion. At the present time, her collections include the work of six Turner Prize nominees or winners: Jesse Darling, Kira Freije, Rene Matić, Sin Wai Kin, Tai Shani, and Zadie Xa, and one Max Mara Art Prize for Women winner, Emma Talbot.

Since 2022, her collections have been on public display in the UK in two institutional exhibitions co-curated by Joseph, the first at the Rugby Art Gallery & Museum, Rugby (2022) and the second at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, Leeds (2023-24). For Joseph, her collections are 'a collection of conversations' as they grew out of her work as a curator, and her relationships with the artists in her collections are of paramount importance.

Institutional Governance and Patronage

Institutional governance and patronage is an important part of Joseph's activities, ensuring the strength and vitality of publicly funded visual culture across the UK. She served as Vice-Chair of Mimosa House in London from 2021-2026 and as a trustee of Matt's Gallery in London from 2018-2022. Joseph also served on the jury of the 2017-2019 Max Mara Art Prize for Women, in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery. Joseph has been a long-standing patron and ambassador of the Royal Academy Schools since the early 2010’s and is a current patron of Camden Art Centre, Hepworth Wakefield, Lightbox, Mimosa House, Modern Art Oxford, South London Gallery and the UK Friends of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Joseph is chairing or has chaired the following Exhibition Circles: Turner Prize nominee Kira Freije's Modern Art Oxford solo exhibition (2026); feminist icon Mira Schor's first UK institutional solo show at Mimosa House, London (2026); and performance artist extraordinaire Rosie Gibbens' first institutional solo show at Matt's Gallery, London (2027).

Residency founder

In 2023, Joseph co-founded the GIRLPOWER Residency in the Aquitaine region of southwestern France, an annual artist residency for female-identifying and non-binary artists. To date, the following artists have participated: Atalanta Xanthe, Becky Tucker, Bethany Stead, Damaris Athene, Emily Mannion, Emily Moore, Emily Platzer, Lexia Hachtmann, Melania Toma, and Paula Turmina.

writer

Joseph is the executive editor or Korean Art: The Power of Now (Thames & Hudson, 2013), the most comprehensive English-language survey of South Korean's vibrant contemporary art scene, spotlighting 120 visionary artists, curators, and institutions and detailing how Korea evolved into a major player in the international market. In 2017, she profiled selected contemporary artists on a year-long series titled 'Marcelle Joseph Interviews' on the online FAD Magazine, including, among others, Jonathan Baldock, Emma Cousin, Kate Cooper and Bea Bonafini.

ADVOCATE

Every summer since 2020, Joseph has hosted an Instagram Takeover, giving one female or queer artist each week carte blanche to commune with her followers about their artistic practice, exhibitions they've loved or participated in, their literary or film influences, their art heroes/heroines or whatever they fancy. Selected participants include: Alex Margo Arden, Alicia Reyes McNamara, Anna Perach, Daisy Collingridge, Gal Schindler, Hannah Lim, Isabella Amram, Jakob Rowlinson, Leo Costelloe, Lolly Adams, Natalia Gonzalez-Martin, Silke Weissbach, Susie Green and Zayn Qahtani.

education

Joseph holds a B.S. from Cornell University (USA), a J.D. in Law from New York University (USA), a Dip. Law from Brasenose College at Oxford University (UK), a Cert. in Art Business from Christie's Education (UK) and a MA in Art History (Distinction) from Birkbeck, University of London (UK).