Julian Cox
Founding Curator of Photography and Chief Curator
the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Julian Cox joined the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in September 2010 as its Founding Curator of Photography and Chief Curator at the de Young Museum. He was educated in Great Britain and holds a BA in Art History from the University of Manchester and an M.Phil in the History of Photography from the University College of Wales. After holding curatorial positions at the National Library of Wales and the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, England, he moved to the United States in 1992 to pursue his career here. For more than decade he worked with the photographs collection at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and then spent five years leading the photography program at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Cox has organized numerous exhibitions on subjects ranging from the dawn of photography’s invention in Europe in the 19th century, to contemporary practice in the United States. He has been a reviewer for the Atlanta Photography Group; Atlanta Celebrates Photography; Palm Springs Photo Festival and Photo NOLA.

Cox is the co-author, with Colin Ford, of the critically acclaimed publication Julia Margaret Cameron: The Complete Photographs (2003), the first catalogue raisonné produced of the work of a photographer. He is the author of many scholarly articles and several books. His recent publications include The Portrait Unbound: Photographs by Robert Weingarten (2010), Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968 (2008), and Harry Callahan: Eleanor (2007).