Does art have a story to tell? A London-based curator and historian, Jill Lloyd thinks so. She will bring one story to New York this week, when the exhibit “Van Gogh and Expressionism” opens Thursday at the Neue Galerie. In structuring the show to trace the Dutch artist’s influence on German and Austrian Expressionist artists, she said, “We’re moving to chart the history of these paintings. If only they could speak.”

She has assembled an impressive group of voices: The show includes work by Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gustav Klimt, and Max Pechstein, as well as a number of paintings by van Gogh. “Van Gogh and Expressionism” opened last fall at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which helped organize the exhibit.

Ms. Lloyd first moved to London to attend the Courtauld Institute of Art, earning a Ph.D. in art history before working as a research assistant in Berlin. She later moved to Paris to work as editor of the magazine Art International. There she met and married the magazine’s publisher, Michael Peppiatt. They eventually returned to London, starting a family that today includes two teenagers.

Ms. Lloyd’s shift to working as a curator maintained her prominent status in the art community but provided breaks to be with her children. She began to work on a freelance basis at museums around Europe. “I was invited to do my first show when my time at the magazine was coming to an end,” she said. “One thing just led to another.”

Ms. Lloyd has worked at many of the world’s preeminent art hubs, including her first major exhibition, a show about post-Impressionist German artist Lovis Corinth at the Tate and Berlin’s National Gallery. This was followed by sets at the Royal Academy in London and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. In 2003, she had her first show at the Neue Galerie, of work by the German artist Christian Schad. She is a recipient of the German government’s Order of Merit, because, she said, “they felt I’d played an important role in introducing German and Austrian art to a generation.”

“My job involves research, it involves contact with people,” Ms. Lloyd said. “I love the aspect of actually finding works of art. You’ve been looking at them in books and on computer screens, and there they are. I love the moment when it all comes together.”

For the van Gogh exhibit, she began researching in 2004, then traveled to Germany and Amsterdam, visiting museums and working to persuade private collectors to loan paintings. Her persistence paid off. Egon Schiele’s “Wilted Sunflowers (Autumn Sun II),” an Expressionist painting, had been lost for years before turning up in France last year. An American collector bought the painting for nearly 12 million pounds at an auction at Christie’s. While preparing the van Gogh exhibit, Ms. Lloyd, on a whim, asked a New York friend if he knew the current whereabouts of “Autumn.” Within two weeks, she had secured the loan. “It’s the first time it’s been on public exhibit since the beginning of the last century,” she said.

Even more exciting was her success in landing van Gogh’s littleseen painting “The Wheat Field Behind St. Paul’s Hospital.” When van Gogh’s work was first attracting attention from international art circles after his death, “Field” was the first to go on public display. Since 1902, it has been loaned only twice, and the Neue exhibit marks the first time it has been on view in America. “The loan came through at the very last minute,” she said. “You go on hoping and persuading, and then a letter finally comes telling you you’ve got it. We felt shock, then disbelief.”

Now that the Neue show is nearly up and running, Ms. Lloyd is back at home in London. The family also keeps an apartment in Paris, where she can often be found wandering the Picasso Museum (“one of my favorites”).

Ms. Lloyd keeps busy even when she is not in the middle of organizing a show, however. She and Mr. Peppiatt edited the catalog for “Van Gogh and Expressionism,” and she recently completed a book about the life of the Viennese artist Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, to be published in May by Yale University Press. Ms. Lloyd will soon travel to New York for the van Gogh opening. When she returns home, a new gallery project of German art beckons. It is in the earliest stages of planning, yet Ms. Lloyd already hopes it will take her to Spain and Italy.