Draft:Sarah Victoria Turner

Sarah Victoria Turner is an art historian, curator and writer. She has published widely on sculpture, modern art and on the entangled relationships between Britain, the British Empire and South Asia.

Turner was born in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, and grew up in the Northwest of England, attending secondary school in Blackburn, Lancashire. She read History of Art at Pembroke College, Cambridge. At the University of Leeds, she studied for an MA in Sculpture Studies, run in partnership with the Henry Moore Institute. Turner then completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art under the supervision of Professor Christopher Green. She began her academic career at the University of York where she was first a Teaching Fellow and then a Lecturer in the Department of History of Art (2008–2013). She was Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art between 2016 and 2018. Turner joined the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, which is part of Yale University, in 2013 as Deputy Director for Research and later as Deputy Director. In 2023 she succeeded Mark Hallett as Director; she is the first woman to hold the post since the founding of the Centre in 1970. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Turner is the founding Editor-in-Chief of British Art Studies, an award-winning, open-access journal launched in 2012. With Jo Baring, she is co-host of the Sculpting Lives podcast. She serves as a director and advisor on a number of boards and councils which include: PHAROS Executive Steering Committee, the Warburg Institute Advisory Group and the British Art Network Steering Committee.