Biography

I am a curator with over 20 years’ experience in the cultural, arts, academic and private sectors. I currently work at UAL: University of the Arts London on the AHRC Transforming Collections: Reimagining Art, Nation and Heritage project on original research critiquing the status and nature of acquisitions to public collections of modern British art, including experiments involving machine learning (AI) and organisation texts. I am also Research Curator for the Museum of Cornish Life leading collections strategy and new curatorial research into the contemporary significance of social history and folk museums.

I am a Fellow of the Museums Association (2018) and a former member of its Ethics Committee, accredited facilitator with the Association of Facilitators (2017-2021) and Honorary Research Fellow in the College of Arts and Humanities at Swansea University. In 2022 I was awarded an Art Fund Headley Fellowship and a Fellowship by the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) on their Exchange Programme for International Curators (EPIC).

From 2018 to 2021 I led Citizen Curators, a work based curatorial training programme that I devised, designed and delivered for volunteers across seven museums in Cornwall, supported by Cornwall Museums Partnership, supported by the Esmée Fairbairn Collections Fund. In 2016 to 2018 I completed an intensive programme of leadership development as one of Arts Council England‘s prestigious Change Makers.

I am a material culture and collections specialist with particular interests in object-centred research, patronage and reputation in public collections, the role of the museum curator, professional ethics, policymaking and trends, and alternative understandings of the circulation and exchange of art and artefacts, especially those from subaltern or decolonial viewpoints.

I have a specialist interest in gems, metals and jewellery and gained my Certificate in Gemmology from Gem-A, the Gemmological Association of Great Britain, in 2022 with distinction. I blog about the science and magic of gems on my website.

In my spare time I play traditional Celtic, English and medieval music on the fiddle.

Recent publications

Goskar, T. (2024). ‘Museums will forget: Critical approaches to catalog-centered historical research’, Collections, 20(1), 156-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/15501906231220974

Goskar, T. (2023). ‘The price of everything and the value of nothing: Museums, thrifts and British society’, History & Policy (4 September 2023). https://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion-articles/articles/the-price-of-everything-and-the-value-of-nothing-museums-thefts-and-british-society