Selby Whittingham

Whittingham organised a Turner Symposium at the University of York in 1980 and an International Colloquium on Artists' Museums at the University of Paris in 1990). He was a guest curator for the Turner Museum in the United States, in 2009. He has worked closely with ArtWatch International and contributes often to the ArtWatchUK Journal and The Jackdaw. He was awarded Art Watch's Frank Mason Prize in 2011.

After Oxford, Whittingham was an assistant in the Conway Library at the Courtauld Institute of Art and then went to Manchester City Art Gallery as a trainee assistant for 2 years. He worked as a temporary assistant at the National Portrait Gallery and was then appointed assistant keeper at Manchester City Art Gallery in 1975. The same year he rejoined the staff of Manchester City Art Gallery. He then founded the Turner Society.

Selby Whittingham (born 8 August 1941 in Batu Gajah, Malaysia) is an art expert in London who has specialized in the work of J.M.W. Turner. Whittingham is a consultant to museums and institutions. He is the secretary and founder of The Independent Turner Society and is the author of a number of books about art and museums.

Whittingham was born in Batu Gajah, Malaysia. He was baptised Jeremy Selby Whittingham Oppenheim in 1941 in Malaya, but dropped the name "Oppenheim" soon after by deed poll due to anti-German feeling then. His father, Henry Rolf Oppenheim (1902–1987), escaped from Singapore in a sampan with the Australian Major-General Gordon Bennett to India, an escape which became the subject of a parliamentary question to Winston Churchill. Whittingham's uncle, Sir Duncan Oppenheim, besides his life in business, was an artist and Chairman of the Design Council and of the Royal College of Art as well as a member of the V&A Advisory Council. His mother, Barbara Whittingham-Jones, was admitted to the bar at Gray's Inn. She was involved in politics with Randolph Churchill, and subsequently worked in journalism and as a historian, but died aged 51. [See 2021 Wikipedia entry on mother, Barbara Whittingham-Jones]