Atkinson, Harriet

Harriet Atkinson is a historian of art and design at University of Brighton, UK. During a recent major fellowship through Arts and Humanities Research Council UK (2019–2023) she explored the role of exhibitions as propaganda and activism in Britain from 1933 to 1953. This culminated in the monograph Showing Resistance: Propaganda and Modernist Exhibitions in Britain, 1933–53 (Manchester University Press, 2024); the co-edited book Exhibitions Beyond Boundaries: Transnational Exchanges Through Art, Architecture and Design from 1945 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022); and documentary film Art on the Streets (2023), which focuses on an exhibition mounted on a bombed-out department store in central London during World War II and the motivations of the artists and designers who mounted it, many of whom were recent refugee arrivals in Britain. The film has garnered several film awards and is being screened daily at London’s Tate Gallery until July 2025.