Syrago Tsiara appointed as new head of National Gallery
Greece’s Culture Minister Lina Mendoni appointed art historian and curator Syrago Tsiara as new director of the National Gallery in Athens.
Since 2007, Tsiara has been the director of the Thessaloniki Center of Contemporary Art, and was previously working as a curator at the State Museum of Contemporary Art.
Born in the city of Larissa, central Greece, in 1968, Tsiara studied history and archeology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and continued her postgraduate studies in social art history at the University of Leeds in the UK. She defended her doctoral dissertation at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki on the role of public sculpture in shaping national memory and was awarded a doctorate in 2000. She worked for the research, study, documentation and exhibition of the famous George Costakis Collection in Greece and abroad, while teaching at the University of Thessaly.
The curator has fifteen years of experience managing public museum organizations and twenty years in managing collections of works of Greek and international art.
She has curated more than fifty exhibitions in Greece and abroad, organized conferences, authored scientific studies and lectured, mainly on issues of art and politics, memory, identity, curatorial practices and the connection of contemporary art with archaeological sites and the public. sphere.
Tsiara is replacing Marina Lambraki-Plaka, the former long-time director of the National Gallery, who passed away in hospital on June 13 at the age of 83.
