Dr Jonathan Allen is a London-based artist and writer. He is the editor and principal author of Lost Envoy – The Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare (Strange Attractor Press, 2016 | 2023), and co-curator of the exhibition Tarot – Origins & Afterlives (2025) at the Warburg Institute. Allen’s writing on a wide range of topics – from Polaroid photography to the cultural history of the Smurfs – has appeared regularly in the New York / Berlin-based art and culture magazine Cabinet, for which he guest-edited an issue in 2007. Between 2009–10, he initiated and co-curated the Hayward Gallery national touring exhibition Magic Show. He is currently a curator at The Magic Circle Museum, London.
Allen's work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally since the early 1990s, including at the 10th Manif d'Art Biennale, Quebec City (2022), MASS MoCA, Massachusetts (2017), STUK, Leuven (2017), Ryan Lee Gallery, New York (2016), Frankfurter Kunstverein (2008), and the 1st Singapore Biennale (2006).
For more information, see http://www.jonathanallen.info/