Helen Trompeteler is a curator and writer deeply committed to amplifying the voices of underrepresented visual artists. As Deputy Director at Silver Eye Center for Photography, she brings curatorial expertise to innovative exhibitions and leads artist relations. She oversees educational initiatives, including the Scholars @ Silver Eye program, a two-semester long program for senior students focused on artist and community centered non-profit practices.
Previously, Helen spent eighteen years leading strategic partnerships and exhibitions for world-renowned institutions, including the Royal Collection and the National Portrait Gallery. Highlight projects included Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy and the internationally touring exhibitions and publications Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon and Man Ray Portraits.
Her independent practice has been recognized by The Josef Breitenbach Research Fellowship (Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona) and the Transformers initiative (Museums Association, UK).
Selected exhibitions and projects below introduce her expansive international practice.
Silver Eye Center for Photography
2022 – Present
Since 2022, Helen has curated and co-curated over fifteen exhibitions at Silver Eye in collaboration with nationally recognized artists, such as Aaron R. Turner, Kelli Connell and Natalie Krick, Whitney Hubbs and Patricia Voulgaris, and Hannah Price, among many others. A selection of flagship recurring Silver Eye exhibition programs are also introduced below.
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Image credit: Tara Geyer / Silver Eye Center for Photography.
2022 – Present
Radial Survey is Silver Eye’s flagship biennial exhibition featuring preeminent emerging and mid-career photographic artists based within 300 miles of Pittsburgh. Since 2002, Helen has co-curated each edition with Leo Hsu, Executive Director of Silver Eye and co-produced its publication. Radial Survey Vol.3 included Akea Brionne, Larry W. Cook, Alanna Fields, Marissa Long, Eduardo L. Rivera, Shane Rocheleau, and Lisa Toboz, which explored the relationships between presence, visibility, and absence.
Learn more at silvereye.org
Installation view of Radial Survey Vol.3. Image credit: Sean Carroll / Silver Eye Center for Photography.
Fellowship
2022 – Present
For twenty-five years, Silver Eye has supported vital new voices in contemporary photography through Fellowship, its annual international juried photography competition. Since 2022, Helen has been honored to collaborate with each year’s Fellowship artists to curate exhibitions of their work that explore the myriad ways photography shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
Learn more about Fellowship 25 on view at Silver Eye Center for Photography through August 2, 2025
Image credit: Sean Carroll / Silver Eye Center for Photography
Emerging Visions
October 24, 2023 – Present
Produced in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
Emerging Visions presents work by Sobia Ahmad, Charlese Dawson, Anqwenique Kinsel, and Evangeline Mensah-Agyekum. This multi-site public art exhibition in Downtown Pittsburgh aims to provide meaningful encounters in an environment that tens of thousands of residents, workers, and passers-by experience each day.
Learn more at silvereye.org
Photographs by Evangeline Mensah-Agyekum in Emerging Visions, December 2023. Image courtesy Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership
Pittsburgh Presents
2022 – Present
At Silver Eye, Helen curates initiatives highlighting the work of extraordinary image-makers in the local community in Pittsburgh. This includes the ongoing Pittsburgh Presents series, which has exhibited the work of local artists including Nicole Czapinski, Zeal Eva, Karen Lue, and Centa Schumacher.
Learn more at silvereye.org
Installation view of Zeal Eva: Gentle Landing. Image credit: Sean Carroll / Silver Eye Center for Photography.
By/For: Photography & Democracy
2024 – Present
In 2024, Helen co-founded By/For: Photography & Democracy with Dr. Tom Allbeson and Dr. Colleen O’Reilly. This collective investigates photography’s assumed democratic credentials as an art form and a medium of mass communication.
The inaugural 2024/25 program presents a six-part series of virtual lectures and accompanying readings with Shawn Michelle Smith, Brenna Wynn Greer, Thy Phu, Darren Newbury, Ileana Selejan, and Patricia Hayes.
Image credit: Binh Danh, from the series Immortality, The Remnants of the Vietnam and American War. Courtesy of the artist
Juror and reviewer
2016 – Present
Helen is a juror and reviewer for initiatives in the United States and UK. She has served in these roles for organizations including Three Rivers Arts Festival – The Pittsburgh Culture Trust, Month of Photography – Colorado Photographic Arts Center; Photolucida’s Critical Mass, Filter Photo, and Source’s Graduate Photography Online.
Future inquiries may be sent via e-mail
Image credit: Filter Photo festival, 2023
Visiting Curator and Writer, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
January – April 2024
Every year, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago invites a curator/writer on photography to collaborate with the cohort of MFA Photography students to develop a publication of current student work. Helen was honored to be the 2024 visiting curator and writer, working with the students alongside project coordinator Jan Tichy and designer Lucas Reif to curate the 2024 publication. Learn more about some of the artists by exploring their 2024 Graduate Exhibitions online.
Moments of Transition: the photographs of Grace Robertson
Online exhibition co-curated with Catlin Langford for the 2021 Photo Oxford Festival
In the mid-1950s, Grace Robertson (1930-2021) was one of the few women photojournalists working for the British magazine Picture Post. This online exhibition explores Robertson’s humanistic lens on women’s lives and post-war Britain. Produced with the support of Getty Images Hulton Archive.
From the series ‘Mother’s Day Off’, 1954 © The Grace Robertson / Thurston Hopkins Archive
Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy
Project Manager and Lead Curator
From 2017-2020, Helen was the project manager and lead curator of this collaborative digitization project, which made available some 22,000 items from the Royal Collection, Royal Archives, and Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. This project’s impact included an audience of 194 million at the press launch and 1.4 million for the accompanying television program Prince Albert: A Victorian Hero Revealed. Explore more at albert.rct.uk
A general view of Rome by T Carr, 1854 © Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020
17-21 January 2018
Curated by Hemera Collective, which specializes in photography and lens-based media. Helen is a former member and contributed to Photo50 in 2018.
© Foundland Collective, The New World, Episode 1, 2017, video still. (http://www.foundland.info/)
Josef Breitenbach Research Fellowship, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona
2016
Project ‘Shared Vision: Experiments in Photography Education: 1945-1975’ sought to examine the history of photography education in the US in the post-war period.
Photography class at Black Mountain College © Barbara Morgan / Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina
Audrey Hepburn: Portraits of an Icon
2 July – 18 October 2015
Co-curator
This exhibition was the first major UK exhibition to examine the photographic iconography of Audrey Hepburn and was organized with support from the Audrey Hepburn Estate. The exhibition achieved a record-breaking figure of 126,687 visitors. Helen was the lead author for the catalog which received extensive international sales, including French, German, and Japanese language editions.
Installation photograph © Tori Miller / National Portrait Gallery, London
26 September 2014 – 21 June 2015
This display celebrated a major gift of photographs from Lord Snowdon to the National Portrait Gallery in 2013 and coincided with a new monograph published by Rizzoli. It included previously unseen portraits and new selections from the highly influential book Private View (1965) which examined the British art world.
Installation photograph © Tori Miller / National Portrait Gallery, London
Michael Peto Photographs: Mandela to McCartney
17 September 2013 – 1 June 2014
This series of displays in London, Edinburgh, and New York, organized in collaboration with the University of Dundee, explored the work of photojournalist Michael Peto.
Installation photograph © Tori Miller / National Portrait Gallery, London
7 February – 27 May 2013
Associate Curator
This first major museum retrospective of Man Ray’s innovative photographic portraits featured over a hundred works surveying his career in America and Paris between 1916-68. This exhibition was the first of the National Portrait Gallery’s to tour to Russia (State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts), which offered new opportunities for cultural exchange.
Self-portrait with Camera by Man Ray, 1930. © 2008 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2012
Fred Daniels: Cinema Portraits
28 September 2012 – 24 March 2013
This display celebrated the career of Fred Daniels, pioneer of ‘stills’ and portrait photography, known especially for his work with filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, including A Matter of Life and Death (1946).
Filming Victoria the Great (1937) by Fred Daniels © Estate of Fred Daniels
Twentieth Century Portraits: Photographs by Dmitri Kasterine
11 September 2010 – 3 April 2011
Dmitri Kasterine began his career working for Jocelyn Steven’s Queen magazine before enjoying a long association with film director Stanley Kubrick. This display of portraits presented a cross-section of major cultural figures of the twentieth century.
Dame Muriel Spark by Dmitri Kasterine, 1978. © Dmitri Kasterine (https://www.kasterine.com/)
Format Photography Agency: 1983-2003
21 January – 8 August 2010
Format photographers documented epoch-changing events such as the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (1981-2000) and the 1984-5 Miners’ Strike, and participated in movements that brought social change.
Women protestors at Greenham Common, 1983 © Estate of Raissa Page
1 December 2009 – 5 April 2010
This display coincided with the publication of Jane Bown’s book Exposures (2009). Photographs for The Observer were shown alongside unpublished pictures for the first time.
Southend on Sea, Essex, 1954 © Estate of Jane Bown