Lucinda Lax

Lucinda Lax is Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at the Yale Center for British Art, a position she has held since January 2023. In this role, Lucinda has responsibility for the day-to-day running and management of the Paintings and Sculpture Department and its collection of over 2,500 artworks ranging in date from the late medieval period to the present day. Among her current projects, Lucinda is overseeing the reinstallation of the YCBA’s permanent collection. This will see a complete re-presentation of the full suite of fourth-floor galleries at the Museum, with the aim of spotlighting the artistic richness and quality of the artworks whilst drawing out broader socio-economic and historical themes. Lucinda is also preparing an exhibition on the work of British landscape painter J. M. W. Turner to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the artist’s birth. This will bring together a selection of paintings, watercolors and prints from the YCBA’s exceptional holdings to retell the story of Turner’s career and the complex world he inhabited. 

Lucinda’s research interests include eighteenth-century history, politics, and culture; British art of the long eighteenth century, particularly the work of Joseph Wright of Derby, Edward Penny, Allan Ramsay and Sir Henry Raeburn; the London art world 1740–1785 and the first public art exhibitions; British history and genre painting; and artistic networks in Britain and the Continent in the early modern period. Lucinda has lectured widely on many aspects of British art while her published research has focused on the visual culture of the Jacobite movement. She is currently preparing an essay on Joseph Wright’s candlelight pieces for the catalog of the J. Paul Getty Museum’s forthcoming exhibition “Joseph Wright of Derby: A Light in the Dark”. 

Previously, Lucinda was Senior Curator, Portraiture (1700–1800) at the National Galleries of Scotland, where she undertook innovative redisplays of the gallery’s historic collections. Among these were two permanent collection exhibitions, “Scots in Italy: Artists and Adventurers” (2016) and “The Remaking of Scotland: Nation, Migration, Globalisation 1760–1860” (2018). The latter has been widely recognized for introducing critical debates about colonialism and Scotland’s role in the transatlantic slave trade to the National Galleries of Scotland’s displays. She also oversaw the acquisition of major portraits by Ramsay, Raeburn and Antonio Zucchi. Lucinda holds a Ph.D. in the History of Art from the University of York, UK, and in 2012 was a YCBA Visiting Scholar.