Tate is delighted to announce today that it has appointed Natalia Sidlina as Adjunct Research Curator for Russian art and Julia Tatiana Bailey as Assistant Curator, Collections, International Art. Their posts are supported by the V-A-C Foundation for three years and form part of a commitment to develop Tate’s knowledge and expertise of Russian contemporary art. The appointments follow the establishment by Tate of its Russia and Eastern Europe Acquisitions Committee (REEAC) in October 2012.
Natalia Sidlina lives and works in London. She has a BA in Museum Studies (State University of Humanities), an MA in Contemporary Art History (Sorbonne University) and a PhD in Art History (State Institute of Art Research). She specialised in Russian émigré art and from 2005 has worked in the Russian and British museum sectors. Her exhibition projects include: Russian Constructivism Reconstructed, a permanent exhibition at the State Tretyakov Galley, Moscow 2006; Naum Gabo – Prototypes for Sculptures, Tate Britain 2010; and Cosmonauts: birth of the space age, Science Museum, London 2015. She has also worked on several important research projects including from 2009–10 the Gabo collection at Tate Archive and from 2011–12 David King’s private collection for the publication Russian Revolutionary Posters (Tate Publishing, 2012).
Julia Tatiana Bailey is a British art historian. She is completing a PhD at University College London and her thesis explores the display and reception of Soviet art in the West from the 1920s to the 1970s, with particular focus on Soviet-American cultural diplomacy during the Cold War. From 2013–14 she was the Terra Foundation Predoctoral Fellow in American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC. She has previously conducted major research projects in the United States and Russia. In 2014 she helped curate the exhibition This Leads to Fire: Russian Art from Nonconformism to Global Capitalism, Selections from the Kolodzei Art Foundation Collection at the Neuberger Museum of Art in New York. She has also worked in Arts Marketing at the V&A and the Royal Academy of Arts.
Frances Morris, Head of Collection (International Art) at Tate said: “We look forward to welcoming Natalia Sidlina and Julia Tatiana Bailey to the international team at Tate. Their expertise and experience will be invaluable and will help us significantly deepen our knowledge of art from Russia”.
Teresa Iarocci Mavica, Director V-A-C Foundation said: “V-A-C are very proud to be supporting for the next three years the development of Tate’s curatorial expertise of Russian modern and contemporary art, something which is very close to our main mission as a foundation. We look forward to following the work of Natalia Sidlina and Julia Tatiana Bailey with great enthusiasm.”