Douglas McCarthy
Douglas McCarthy has a Masters degree in Art History from the University of St Andrews. Over the past two decades, he has worked internationally in public museums, private art collections and image archives in a variety of roles, including photographic studio manager, researcher, curator and collections manager. Driven by keen curiosity and a love of visual culture, Douglas is a passionate advocate for making cultural heritage openly accessible to promote the exchange of ideas and to contribute to a thriving knowledge economy.
As Collections Engagement Manager at Europeana, Douglas supports Europeana’s mission by working with partner institutions to showcase their collections to online audiences. A key element of his work is developing Europeana’s thematic collections, especially on art and photography, to give users access to relevant and high-quality content from the corpus. Douglas's activities include editorial development, content curation and publication, in collaboration with Europeana's network of cultural heritage institutions. Variously as author, editor and producer, Douglas has been involved in the online exhibitions 'Visions of War' (2018), 'An Ecstasy of Beauty' (2017) in partnership with the Finnish National Gallery, 'Art Nouveau: A Universal Style' (2017), 'The Colossus of Leonardo da Vinci' (2016) with Museo Galileo, Florence, and 'Faces of Europe' (2016), a survey of European art from the medieval era to the present day, featured over 100 artworks from 28 countries.
Douglas frequently represents Europeana at public conferences and workshops. He writes regularly for Europeana Pro and developed the blog series Museums in the Digital Age, featuring interviews and insights from culture professionals at institutions such as the Pinakotheken, Wellcome Collection, Slovak National Gallery and Mauritshuis. In a personal capacity, Douglas is currently leading an international survey of open access policies in the GLAM sector in collaboration with Andrea Wallace, Lecturer of Law at the University of Exeter.
