Dr. Samantha Lackey is Head of Collection and Exhibitions at the Whitworth, which she joined in 2016. She has curated exhibitions on and with Andy Warhol, Steve McQueen and Cecily Brown at the gallery.
She previously worked as curator at The Hepworth Wakefield, where she was part of the team that opened the gallery in 2011, and led on exhibitions and events including Martin Parr: The Rhubarb Triangle and Other Stories (2016), Wild Girl: Gertrude Hermes (2015), Plasters: Casts & Copies (2015), Folkert de Jong (2015) Philip-Lorca diCorcia (2014) and the collaborative performance between Linder Sterling and Northern Ballet, The Ultimate Form (2013). Her original specialism was in Surrealist film; in 2005 she completed a PhD that focused on the relationship between early psychology and theories of attention to surrealist film and has published on the subject. Following this research Lackey worked as a lecturer at the University of Manchester and a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Studies in Surrealism and its Legacies before moving to curating, at the Whitworth on the Subversive Spaces: Surrealism and Contemporary Art (2009) exhibition.