Britt Salvesen

Britt Salvesen is an American curator and writer specialising in photography, prints, and drawings. Since 2009 she has been curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Before joining LACMA she led the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona as director and chief curator. She has published extensively as a catalogue essayist and editor on subjects including landscape photography, perception, digital art, and film history.

Early life and education Salvesen was born and raised in Wisconsin. She received her undergraduate degree from Trinity University in San Antonio, subsequently earning a Master of Arts from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where she held an internship at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She completed a PhD at the University of Chicago, where she was awarded a Rhodes Curatorial Fellowship and a Paul Mellon Fellowship. Her doctoral dissertation examined the Victorian stereoscope and its cultural history.

In 2004, she was appointed curator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona, where she later became director and chief curator.

Curatorial approach Salvesen participated in a five-year initiative at LACMA to reconceive the presentation of the museum's collection in the Zumthor-designed Geffen Galleries, scheduled to open in 2026. The project encouraged cross-departmental collaboration and sought to move beyond conventional Eurocentric and medium-specific frameworks. Her approach requires curators to develop new interpretive connections grounded in their familiarity with collections while extending beyond established specialisations.

Perception has been a recurring theme: 3D: Double Vision (2018–2019), the first survey of stereoscopic and three-dimensional imaging in a North American art museum, explored three-dimensional imaging as a direct engagement with the processes of visual perception. Her practice also emphasises collaboration and cross-cultural exchange.

Writing Salvesen has published catalogue essays, monographs, and edited volumes.

Since her doctoral research on the Victorian stereoscope, Salvesen's writing has addressed the relationship between photography, science, and technology. It recurs in See the Light (2013), which examined connections between photography, neuroscience, and perception, in 3D: Double Vision (2018), a survey of the history of three-dimensional imaging, and in her contribution to Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 (2023), where she argued that an emphasis on technical processes can obscure artistic aims. Digital Witness (2024) extends this inquiry into digital imaging and manipulation.

Landscape photography, particularly in relation to the American West, is a second recurring focus. Her work on the 1975 New Topographics exhibition includes essays situating it historically and examining its conceptual sources. She has also written on John Schott and Stephen Shore, and contributed to studies of survey photography in the visual culture of the American West.

Exhibitions Milwaukee Art Museum At the Milwaukee Art Museum, Salvesen curated Super Hits of the '70s: Photographs from the Collection (October 8, 2004 – January 2, 2005), with works by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, William Eggleston, Lee Friedlander, Linda Connor, Joe Deal, John Divola, Richard Misrach, and Stephen Shore. She also curated exhibitions on Danny Lyon, Bill Brandt and Edward Weston, and presentations of 17th-century French prints and German Expressionist prints. Sharon Lockhart | Noa Eshkol (2012), co-organised with the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, and subsequently shown at the Jewish Museum, New York The Sun and Other Stars: Katy Grannan and Charlie White (2012), a joint exhibition Salvesen originated Ed Ruscha: Standard (2012), focused on Ruscha's depictions of the Standard gas station motif See the Light: Photography, Perception, Cognition (2013), drawn from the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters (2016), which later travelled to the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario 3D: Double Vision (2018–2019), the first survey of stereoscopic and three-dimensional imaging in a North American art museum Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 (2023), surveying the history of computer-generated art from the 1950s to the personal computer era Fielding, Jed. Look at Me: Photographs from Mexico City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Includes essay by Salvesen. Axsom, Richard H., ed. (including Britt Salvesen). Letters to Ellsworth. Portland, Oregon: Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, 2011. Foster-Rice, Greg, and John Rohrbach, eds. Reframing the New Topographics. Chicago: Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago, 2013. Includes essay by Salvesen, "Real Estate Opportunities: Commercial Photography as Conceptual Source in New Topographics." Sherry, David Benjamin. Earth Changes. London: Mörel, 2014. Includes introduction by Salvesen. Schott, John F. Route 66. Portland, Oregon: Nazraeli Press, 2014. Includes essay by Salvesen. Shore, Stephen. Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971–1979. London: Mack, 2020. Includes afterword by Salvesen, "Ordinary Speech: The Vernacular in Stephen Shore's Early 35mm Photography." Strange, Ian. Disturbed Home. Bologna: Damiani, 2022. Includes essay by Salvesen. Scott, Amy, et al. (including Britt Salvesen). Out of Site: Survey Science and the Hidden West. Los Angeles: Autry Museum of the American West, 2024. Jones, Leslie, ed. (including Britt Salvesen). Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023. Includes essay by Salvesen on computer-generated films.