Holly Roussell

Born in 1989 in Vermont, United States, Holly Roussell is a curator, museologist, and art historian specializing in Asian photography and contemporary art. She divides her time between Paris and Beijing. 

After earning a bachelor’s degree in art history, she graduated from the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland with a master’s degree in museology. She previously served as coordinator of the international traveling exhibitions program, as well as the “ Elysée Prize ”, for Photo Elysée in Lausanne from 2013 to 2017.   She has been an exhibition curator at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in China since 2021. At the same time, she served as an artistic advisor for the opening of Fotografiska Shanghai from 2021 to 2023. In 2022, during Paris Photo, she was invited to serve as curator for the “ Curiosa ", dedicated to emerging artists.

She has organized more than 20 group and solo exhibitions around the world: the Folkwang Museum, MUCEM, Rencontres d’Arles, Somerset House, the NGV in Melbourne, Lianzhou Photography Festival, OCT-Loft in Shenzhen, Shanghai Photography Center, Auckland Art Gallery, Fotografiska, MMCA: Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, etc.

​She regularly serves as an expert at international portfolio reviews. For example, she has served on juries for the Aperture Photobook Award, the Landskrona & Breadfield Dummy Book Award, the PhMuseum Grant for Women in Photography, the Musée du Quai Branly Photography Prize, and the Prix Découverte at the Rencontres d’Arles, among others.

As an author, she regularly contributes to exhibition catalogs and journals focused on photography, Chinese art, museology, and conservation. In 2024, she published the first monograph dedicated to Mo Yi, a Chinese artist and experimental photographer: “ Mo Yi: Selected Photographs 1988–2003 ", Thames & Hudson, United Kingdom.