Sam Thorne is a writer and curator. He is director of Nottingham Contemporary. From 2014–16, he was artistic director of Tate St Ives. Prior to that, he was associate editor at frieze magazine, where he is currently a contributing editor. In 2013, he co-founded Open School East, a free-to-attend study programme in London, which later moved to Margate. His book, School: A Recent History of Self-Organized Education, was published by Sternberg Press in 2017.

Thorne has curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions. These include: “Schizophonia” (2013–14), CAC Delme, France; “Images Moving Out Onto Space” (2015), Tate St Ives; “As Above, So Below: Portals, Visions, Spirits & Mystics” (2017), Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; “That Continuous Thing: Artists & the Ceramics Studio, 1920–Today” (2017), Tate St Ives; “The Place Is Here” (2017), “From Ear to Ear to Eye” (2017–18), Nottingham Contemporary; and “Paul Chan: Odysseus and the Bathers” (2018), Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens. Other exhibitions include solo shows with Marguerite Humeau, Lara Favaretto and Wu Tsang.

Sam is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of History of Art at the University of Nottingham, and a trustee of The Baring Foundation. He has been a visiting tutor at the Royal College of Art in London, where is currently a PhD supervisor. He has taught and lectured widely on the subject of art education, and has contributed to a wide range of magazines and journals, including Mousse, Kaleidoscope, OnCurating, Tate Etc, Bidoun, Picpus and Even.