Tom Flynn

Tom Flynn was born in Liverpool and now lives and works between London and his home on the south coast of England. Tom began his career as a fine art auctioneer and valuer before returning to academia. After graduating in Art History at the University of Sussex in 1987, he took an MA on the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum's Joint Course in the History of Design. In 1992 he returned to the University of Sussex to teach art history and undertake doctoral research into nineteenth-century critical attitudes towards the 'chryselephantine' mixed media sculpture of antiquity. From 1997-1999 he held the Henry Moore Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in the History of Sculpture at the University of Sussex where, with Professor Michelle O'Malley, he co-organised an international conference on Rodin's connections with the United Kingdom.

Tom has worked in a variety of roles across the academic, publishing and business sectors of the art world. He has written art market-related journalism for a range of international magazines and journals, including The Art Newspaper, Art & Auction, The Spectator, ARTnews and from 2002-2004 was editor of Antiques & Collectables Magazine.

Aside from his serious academic life, Tom has also engaged with more light-hearted content creation, launching the successful (now disbanded) Artnose website which, from 2002-2006, took a satirical look at the absurdities of the global art market and cultural heritage debates. One of his spoof stories on the Parthenon Marbles was mistakenly interpreted as fact by the Belgian broadsheet De Morgen and subsequently reported by The Guardian.

Tom has written widely on the use of technology in the art market and from 2000-2003 was a director of art price data company Invaluable.com. From 2004-2006 he was CEO of the leading online limited edition fine art print company Eyestorm.com, which he successfully re-launched after a long period of managerial neglect.

In 2010 Tom was appointed Senior Lecturer and programme director of the RICS-Accredited MA programme in Art Appraisal (Professional Practice) at Kingston University. He is also course director on the MA module on the International Art Market at Richmond, the American International University in London and a visiting lecturer on the International Art Market at the London-based IESA Masters course.

Since 2010, Tom has also contributed to the Postgraduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection Studies run by ARCA, the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art in Amelia, Italy. He is a member of AICA, the International Association of Art Critics and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Tom has published on art and design history, cultural heritage, art crime, the art market, the history of museums and the Parthenon Marbles controversy, plus a number of monographs on contemporary sculptors. His most recent book, 'The A to Z of the International Art Market' is to be published by Bloomsbury Press in November 2016. He is available for speaking and lecturing engagements.