The previous international director of Frieze artwork truthful, Victoria Siddall, has been appointed director of the Nationwide Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London, changing into the first-ever lady to tackle the function. She’s going to take up the publish this autumn, changing Nicholas Cullinan who left the place in June to develop into director of the British Museum.
Siddall was trustee on the NPG from July 2023 till this month. Previous to this she spent a yr as a member of the gallery’s reopening committee throughout its intensive three-year refurbishment, which value £41.3m.
“That is maybe probably the most thrilling time within the NPG’s historical past, following the latest reopening and Inspiring Individuals mission that the group delivered so flawlessly underneath Nicholas Cullinan’s management,” Siddall says in a press release.
Siddall is thought for her intensive expertise within the industrial artwork world. She was international director of Frieze, founding Frieze Masters in 2012 together with Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp. She subsequently led the Frieze artwork festivals throughout London, New York and Los Angeles. After securing the launch of Frieze Seoul in 2022, she grew to become a non-executive director of Frieze.
She has additionally been chair of the board on the non-profit gallery Studio Voltaire in London. “As chair, she guided the organisation by way of a profitable capital redevelopment marketing campaign, significantly growing the area devoted to artist studios and public programmes,” says an NPG assertion.
Siddall additionally co-founded Gallery Local weather Coalition and Murmur, two environmental charities, and has labored with Tate in a strategic advisory capability. In a speech given to graduates on the Sotheby’s Institute of Artwork in London earlier this yr, she stated: “Whereas I hope you’ll preserve the planet in thoughts in your careers, there are lots of different points to work on the place change would make a constructive distinction.
“Gender stability, for instance, is one thing we have now seen big progress on even within the time of my profession. Once I began at Christie’s in 2000 [as Head of Proposals], ladies had solely simply been allowed to put on trousers to work, and there have been definitely no ladies working the foremost London museums. This has improved radically in that we now have ladies in among the high jobs within the artwork world and cultural sector.”
In an Instagram publish revealed right this moment (28 August), Cullinan congratulated Siddall on her new function. “…you may be sensible and know the establishment so properly,” he wrote. “I’m so comfortable for you and this excellent museum to have such an incredible lady on the helm, which is each thrilling and historic!”
