Elizabeth Cumming is a graduate of Edinburgh University. She was initially a curator of fine art in Dundee and in Edinburgh, where she was Keeper of the City Art Centre, but her interests widened while researching her doctoral thesis in the early 1980s on the pioneer Arts and Crafts artist Phoebe Anna Traquair, whose work she has since championed. Her exhibitions included Glasgow 1900: Art & Design at the Rijksmuseum Vincent Van Gogh in Amsterdam in 1992. Since 2000, when appointed an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Glasgow University, she has worked as an independent art and design historian.