Britt Salvesen

(LACMA, Los Angeles)

Britt Salvesen is Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Departments at LACMA. Recent curatorial projects include Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film (with Staci Steinberger, 2024–25) and Fútbol Is Life: Animated Sportraits by Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr. (on view through July 23, 2026).

Britt Salvesen joined LACMA in October 2009 as curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department. Previously, she was director and chief curator at the Center for Creative Photography (CCP), University of Arizona. Prior to joining CCP, Salvesen was associate curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Milwaukee Art Museum and associate editor of scholarly publications at the Art Institute of Chicago.

She received her MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and her PhD from the University of Chicago.

Her research tends to situate photography in the contexts of technology, experimentation, optics, and mass culture. Among the exhibitions Salvesen has curated at LACMA are Catherine Opie: Figure and Landscape (2010); See the Light: Photography, Perception, Cognition: The Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection (2013); Guillermo del Toro: At Home with Monsters (2016); 3D: Double Vision (2018–19); City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907 (2022); and Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film (2024–25). She is currently working on two exhibitions relating to sports: Futbol Is Life: Animated Sportraits by Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr., opening in February 2026 in conjunction with the World Cup; and Why We Play, co-curated with Tom Farrey, opening in spring 2028 in anticipation of the LA28 Olympics.