Gilane Tawadros is the Director of the Whitechapel Gallery. She was formerly Chief Executive of DACS and Co-Director of the Art360 Foundation. She was the founding Director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva) in London, chaired by Professor Stuart Hall, which, over a decade, achieved an international reputation as a ground-breaking cultural agency at the leading edge of artistic and cultural debates nationally and internationally. She has written extensively on contemporary art and curated a number of international exhibitions.
She has worked with and advised a number of leading international cultural organisations including Tate, Hayward Gallery, Camden Arts Centre, International Foundation Manifesta, Venice Biennial and Forum for African Arts. She is Chair of the Stuart Hall Foundation, Trustee of the Stuart Croft Foundation and Member of the Advisory Committee for the Yale Center for British Art. Her anthology The Sphinx Contemplating Napoleon: Global Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Difference was published by Bloomsbury in 2021.
She has curated numerous exhibitions: Veil (New Art Gallery, Walsall; Bluecoat Art Gallery & Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool, Modern Art, Oxford, 2003 and Kulturehuset, Stockholm, 2004). Fault Lines: Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes, 50th Venice Biennale (2003), Zarina Bhimji (inIVA, 2004); Sutapa Biswas,(2004); David Adjaye (inIVA, 2004), The Real Me (ICA, 2005).