Jennifer Sliwka did not plan to study art history. Growing up, she often accompanied her father, a professor of architecture at the University of Waterloo, to Rome. She arrived at the University of Toronto expecting to become a classicist. When a scheduling conflict kept her out of a required Classics course, she wandered into an Art History classroom instead.
“I sort of accidentally took an intro course,” she recalls, “which I adored.”
On her first essay, her professor wrote a comment that changed her trajectory: “I don’t know what you’re planning on majoring in, but I think it should be art history. Come talk to me.”
She took the advice. By the time she graduated in 2001 with a double major in Classical Civilization and the History of Art, Sliwka had developed habits of thinking that would carry her from Toronto to curatorial positions at the National Gallery in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the British Museum, and to a decade of teaching at King’s College London. In 2023, she became Keeper of the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology and the Garlick Professorial Fellow at Balliol College, both at the University of Oxford.
Last year, she was appointed Director of the Picture Gallery at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, one of the most important collections of Old Master paintings in the world. Her appointment marks an extraordinary milestone in a career shaped by close looking, intellectual rigor, and a commitment to public engagement.
Sliwka says the foundations of her career were laid in the rigorous environment of the Department of Art History: “The very high level that was demanded of us at Toronto put me in good stead,” she says.
What Toronto gave her, she says, is a way of thinking: sustained attention to objects, careful argumentation, and an understanding of how meaning is developed through the encounter between art and audience.
“When I’m leading patrons or students around the gallery, I really think about telling a story and building their knowledge as I take them through.”
Exhibition design is, to Sliwka, not unlike the academic writing she studied all those years ago in Toronto.
“In my opinion, a good ‘hang,’ in curator’s speak, is a visual argument.”
For upper-year undergraduates looking to get into curatorship and museum work, Sliwka encourages a combination of reading and coursework and real-world experience with art in context.
Whenever students visit museums, she advises: “Try and notice everything. Try and notice the colour of the walls. What's the lighting? What's on the labels? What has the curator put in dialogue for you? How do museums present a hierarchy of information? What are curators telling you is most important? How are they storytelling (or not)?”
As Sliwka considers how to make an impact in her new role, she emphasizes making the Viennese collection accessible to students, professionals, and art enthusiasts alike. Her goal is to attract the widest possible audience and to guide them through the collection in a way that makes sense for all.
“I'm not going to do shocking things, but for any institution that is so beloved that people have got to know it for centuries in a certain way—to see it in a different way will, I think, look very, very different. And I'm really excited about that.”
“It will be like seeing something old for the first time,” she smiles.
Sliwka wants the picture program, the display, and the curation to feel like a trusted friend saying, “‘I have this amazing thing I'm going to show you.’” The result should be that “you will follow them wherever they go.”