Dr Anjalie Dalal-Clayton

Biography

I am an art historian and museologist whose work explores the art and exhibition histories of Black and brown artists in Britain, with a focus on how museums and galleries collect, interpret, and display their work. My research is grounded in critical histories of race, empire, and nation, and I work across academic and curatorial contexts to challenge exclusionary narratives and support more equitable practices in the arts and heritage sector.

At UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute, my work sits at the intersection of scholarship, curatorial strategy, and policy influence. I was a Co-Investigator on two major Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)-funded projects within the Towards a National Collection programme: Transforming Collections (2021–24) and Provisional Semantics (2020–22). In Transforming Collections, I led research that surfaced how racial and imperial biases persist across UK public collections, and co-developed a machine learning tool in collaboration with computer scientists to detect bias in catalogue texts. In Provisional Semantics, I introduced artist- and stakeholder-led oral history methods and collective close reading approaches to explore how community-informed interpretations could be meaningfully incorporated into national digitisation strategies.

Combining academic rigour with real-world application, I devised Doing the Work (2021), a national workshop series and publication co-produced with the Contemporary Art Society to support museum professionals in embedding anti-racist and decolonial thinking into everyday practice. The programme, which focused on key areas such as curating, collections management, documentation and engagement, culminated in a widely used digital resource and publication that continues to shape museum sector training and higher education teaching.

I serve in advisory and governance roles across both academic and cultural institutions. As a Research Advisor to the National Portrait Gallery’s Archive Survey Project, I support methodological development in inclusive archival research. As a member of Ben Uri Gallery’s Academic Steering Committee and UAL’s Archives, Museums and Special Collections Board, I contribute to the strategic development of interdisciplinary research infrastructure and equity-driven collection interpretation.

Earlier in my career, I led the first nationwide audit of works by racialised artists in UK public art collections as part of the AHRC-funded Black Artists & Modernism project (2015-18). This work revealed extensive underrepresentation and produced a vital evidence base that has directly influenced museum policies, acquisitions strategies and sector-wide diversity initiatives. The project also informed the BBC4 documentary Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? (2018), helping shift public discourse around race and art history in Britain.

My current book project, Curating Black British Art: Exhibition Cultures Since the 1980s (Bloomsbury, 2026), brings together over a decade of research to analyse how Black British artists have been framed, included and resisted within exhibition cultures, institutional narratives, and curatorial discourses. It reflects my broader commitment to bridging scholarship and practice in ways that reframe British art histories and strengthen accountability across the cultural sector.

I welcome enquiries from scholars, museum professionals, and prospective PhD students interested in collaboration, consultancy, or doctoral supervision.