Emily Sexton - Director of Programming, ACMI

Emily Sexton is Director of Programming for ACMI, Australia’s museum of screen culture. Her ongoing interest in the radical and relevant deeply aligns with her current role, leading the curatorial, film, industry and public programs in a future-focused, vibrant museum whose audience is majority under 35.

An experienced curator, Artistic Director and executive producer, Emily has developed a leading practice for storytelling in new forms - across the performing arts, digital, broadcast, visual arts, literature and ideas.

From 2018-2023 Emily was Artistic Director for Arts House, Melbourne’s home for contemporary performance and experimental practice. In this role Emily oversaw structural and systemic change to Arts House at a programming, leadership, staffing and infrastructure level to address racial and disability justice in the arts. Highlights of her time include commissioning new major works by Marrugeku, Nat Randall and Anna Breckon, Australian Dance Theatre, The Rabble, Dan Daw and Latai Tamaepoeu in addition to major festival and partnerships such as Dance Massive, and The Warehouse Residency, a groundbreaking disability-led commissioning approach. In 2019, Emily co-founded BLEED: a biennial commissioning festival for new art that looks at the relationship between live and digital, in Australia and Taiwan.

Emily’s previously artistic and programming leadership roles include The Wheeler Centre for Books, Writing and Ideas (2015-17), Next Wave Festival (2010-14) and Melbourne Fringe (2008-10). She is a Sidney Myer Creative Fellow, alumni of multiple Creative Australia Leadership programs and serves as a trustee of the Malcolm Robertson Foundation.