[1] Bartrum joined the British Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings in 1979.
In the latter role she was also responsible for coordinating between departments, research into the provenance history of items held in the British Museum collections which may relate to the Nazi era.
[2] Bartrum's first book was German renaissance prints 1490–1550, which was the catalogue of an exhibition held at the museum during 1995.
Bartrum is an authority on the art of Albrecht Dürer and her catalogue for the 2002-03 exhibition Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy,[3] published jointly by the British Museum Press and Princeton University Press in 2002, won the 2003 Art Newspaper/AXA Exhibition Catalogue of the Year Prize.
[1] Along with other Dürer experts, Bartrum helped identify the rediscovered drawing The Virgin and Child With a Flower on a Grassy Bench as attributable to the artist in 2021.