Richard Hylton was born in London, England. He studied BA (Hons) Fine Art at Exeter College of Art and Design between 1987-1990. In 2000, he was awarded an MA in History of Art from Goldsmiths College, University London and, in 2018, a PhD for his doctoral thesis A Labour of Love: The Politics of Presenting Contemporary Art as Part of Commemorations to Mark the United Kingdom’s Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807-2007. His current activities involve organizing exhibitions, art criticism, lecturing as well as researching various aspects of contemporary art practice and display within the international arena.

Since the early 1990s, he has been actively involved in the visual arts sector, primarily as an exhibition organiser, working for a number of different public and independent organisations including Oldham Art Gallery, University of Bradford, Autograph (Association of Black Photographers), London Metropolitan University and the London School of Economics. He has devised, organised and facilitated the production of numerous national and international exhibitions involving a wide range of artists.

Hylton has over the past decade also produced a substantial number of publications and commissioned new writing for exhibition catalogues, brochures and monographs such as The Best Janette Parris and Doublethink: The Art of Donald Rodney. In 2002, after seven years of production, he co-produced with Virginia Nimarkoh, The Holy Bible: Old Testament, David Hammons’ first artist’s book.

In 2007, his book The Nature of the Beast: Cultural Diversity and the Visual Arts Sector, A Study of Policies, Initiatives and Attitudes 1976-2006, was published by University of Bath. He has also written articles on the politics of the visual arts sector in the UK and has recently published essays for two US-based journals, Critical Interventions: Journal of African art and visual culture and CAA Reviews.

In 2014, he was one of five curator selectors for the international exhibition Where do I end and you begin staged by Edinburgh Art Festival. The exhibition involved over twenty artists and included existing and newly commissioned works, which explored historical and contemporary concepts of the ‘Commonwealth’, ‘common-wealth’ and the ‘commons’.

Richard Hylton is currently Cultural Programme Curator at University for the Creative Arts (UCA), where he is responsible for devising, overseeing and supporting internal and external exhibitions and events across UCA’s campuses in Farnham and Epsom.