Erin Barnett is an art historian, writer, editor, and curator with more than twenty years of experience in museums and publishing houses in New York City.

Em Dashing

2003–Current

Em Dashing is an art-focused writing and editorial service in the New York City area. In addition to editing, copyediting, and proofreading catalogues and exhibition didactics for clients including Aperture, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, International Center of Photography, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Sex, Museum of the City of New York, Newark Museum, and the Rubin Museum of Art, I research and write exhibition texts, wall labels, and catalogue texts.

I also teach courses on curatorial practice and critical thinking and writing about photography, video, and material culture at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

International Center of Photography

2016–2020; 2002–2014

As the Director of Exhibitions and Collections, I developed the International Center of Photography’s exhibition program, including project initiation and management of curatorial research, design, and production as well as related publications. Exhibitions include The Lower East Side: Selections from the ICP Collection; James Coupe: Warriors; Your Mirror: Portraits from the ICP Collection (with Claartje van Dijk); RFK Funeral Train: The People’s View; Edmund Clark: The Day the Music Died; President in Petticoats: Civil War Propaganda in Photographs; The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet; Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945; Take Me to the Water: Photographs of River Baptisms; Munkacsi’s Lost Archive; and Amelia Earhart: Image and Icon (with Kristen Lubben). I also served as a Senior Staff facilitator for the Equity Working Group, an interdepartmental group that explored internal and external strategies to deepen the institution’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond programming.

As the Assistant Curator of Collections, I conducted research on the collection and wrote and edited posts for the collections blog. With the assistant registrar, I created a style guide for cataloging works.

Abrams

2014–2016

As a Managing Editor, I managed a list of approximately eight-five titles per year and worked with the editorial, design, and production teams to create and maintain schedules that ensured timely delivery. I guided titles through the preproduction process, including collating and checking corrections on layouts, color proofs, and blue lines. I also hired and managed freelance copyeditors and proofreaders.