London’s National Portrait Gallery is home to the world’s largest portrait collection, but the majority are painted and produced by men. Dr Flavia Frigeri set out to change that.
Art historian and curator Dr Flavia Frigeri is the curatorial and collections director at the National Portrait Gallery. When she first arrived at the museum, heading up the Chanel Culture Fund, her main focus was to bolster the museum’s representation of women artists across history; their contributions to the art scene and their use of art as micro acts of activism. Now, her legacy continues through gallery displays, a new room unveiled during the National Portrait Gallery’s 2023 reopening, and a dedicated fund to diversify the museum’s collection.
We sat down to chat about the paintings to look out for at the National Portrait Gallery during your next visit, the importance of self-portraiture in art, and the best spots in the city to seep in London’s art scene.
Photo by Olivier Hess
To begin, tell us about yourself. When and how did your relationship with art begin? Has art always played an important role in your life?
Yes, it’s actually always been very much a part of my life. I was born and grew up in Rome, right by the Borghese Gallery, which I have visited ever since I can remember. I even learnt to ride a bicycle around these grounds. Art has always been a part of my ecosystem, as well as my upbringing; my parents work in film so they are very visual people. My dad is a production designer and my mum an assistant director. I grew up near film sets and would often spend time at my parents’ work over the summer holidays. So, art and the visual arts have always been almost my vocabulary, my lexicon.
How did this early relationship with art evolve into your career?
Due to my parents’ work, we would often travel for extended periods of time. I knew I was passionate about art from a young age, and so when we would visit new places like Paris and London, I would write lists of the galleries and exhibitions I wanted to see in each city. I just loved art, and decided it was what I wanted to do. I wanted to be an art historian and a curator. Looking back, it was brave of me to break into this industry that really thrives on having connections, when I really had no connections in the industry at all. I just had my passion, which I followed. I studied art history, and completed a PhD, working internships alongside. It was also challenging to break into the art scene in London as a foreigner; it’s a totally different market, but I managed to do it.
Photo by David Parry
You were previously a curator for The Chanel Culture Fund at the National Portrait Gallery, tell us more! What does this mean?
So, the post was funded by Chanel, but I was the curator here at the National Portrait Gallery. Chanel started sponsoring the National Portrait Gallery in 2020. My work focussed on the acquisition of portraits both of and by women. It was centred around representation in the gallery, and the gender imbalance within the collection. At the National Portrait Gallery – and, I think almost every single museum in the world – there is a historic gender imbalance in the art. I can’t claim that over the past four and a half years I have completely rectified that imbalance, however, we made important strides in terms of this change by rehanging key pieces that acknowledge the place of women in British history, and portraiture more broadly.
That’s really interesting. What was your favourite project to work on? Were you involved in the extensive reopening of the gallery in 2023?
There is one room, Room 29, I am particularly fond of. It’s upstairs, and full of self-portraits by women. This is so special to me because self-portraiture is so central to what we present here at the National Portrait Gallery, and to see how these women have chosen to depict themselves is a really strong statement of identity and representation. In the age of the selfie, this room is almost about the selfie before all selfies. There are so many ways and angles to approach this room from. I love to stop by here, because every time I walk in I can hear conversations between different people analysing different artworks. It seems to appeal to a cross-section of society which is so exciting to see.
National Portrait Gallery Room 29 After Inspiring People Project (IP)
Do you have any favourite pieces of work in the National Portrait Gallery that we should make time to see?
I do really love a piece by an artist called Maeve Gilmore in the self-portrait room. She is holding a charcoal stick, which takes up such a small section of the painting, but within this she is making a claim to being an artist. This was painted at a time where the role of a woman was really all about caring for her family, her husband, but in this painting she wants to let the world, us, know that she is an artist, and this is how she sees herself. I think that’s very powerful.
Congratulations on your new role that you started earlier this year, as the curatorial and Collections Director at the National Portrait Gallery. Talk us through your work as a curator, do you mainly look at archives or do you work directly with contemporary artists too?
It’s a mix. Sometimes we acquire historic pieces and so in that case we would work with an archive or with the artist’s estate. Sometimes we work directly with artists. So within the framework of the Chanel-funded project, we worked with artists Jane Howard and Liberty Blake, and they both created a piece for us. That is a completely different process; in these cases I am a producer and take a step back to facilitate the making of the work by supporting the artist. Whereas with archive work it’s more of a curatorial process – sourcing these works is often like detective work. It’s great to have this mix. Even now, I am working with contemporary artists as we are working on acquiring new pieces. I tend to work mostly in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
National Portrait Gallery by Jamie Fobert Architects. Copyright Jim Stephenson 2023
What has been a highlight in your role since joining?
Founding ‘Collecting The Now’. It’s a new initiative that I have brought into the gallery after the Chanel fund. Up until now, the gallery has never had funding specifically for acquiring contemporary art. These acquisitions will be woven into the collections across the gallery.
What do you look for in contemporary artists?
I look for uniqueness, which might sound obvious, but I want artists to show me something that no one else is or that no one else can. I met Allison Katz earlier this year, and I just love her work, and she is very eloquent too, which adds a whole other meaning. Soheila Sokhanvari’s miniature paintings are also great. Amalia Pica is another favourite of mine, she was part of the first ever show I curated for Tate Modern in 2013 while I was working as an assistant curator there. We really bonded; these kinds of relationships really stay with you. Over time, you build up a vocabulary of people you want to go back to.
Gallery views of Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at the National Portrait Gallery.
Photo: © David Parry/ National Portrait Gallery
Who are the contemporary artists that you’ve worked with recently, whose work we can now enjoy at the gallery?
Recently we’ve acquired two pieces by Sonia Boyce and Hew Locke as part of this new fund, ‘Collecting The Now’. Sonia Boyce’s piece is a self-portrait, so it very much feeds into this idea of self-portraiture: the work is a blow-up of images that she took using a photobooth. There’s something quite nostalgic about a photobooth these days. I guess a few people still use them for passport photos, others take them at Soho House with a drink. But it still feels like old-fashioned media. The photobooth was another precursor to the selfie. She took the images in the 1980s, thinking about representations of black women, womanhood, selfhood, and making a statement of presence. It’s a really special piece. Plus, for context, when I first started working at the National Portrait Gallery I said we really needed a self-portrait of Sonia Boyce. It took me four years to find and acquire it, but here we are! The Hew Locke piece is another really interesting dialogue between marble busts and the legacies of the empire. It’s unique to think of history from a contemporary art perspective.
If we only have an hour to spend in the gallery, which piece in the permanent collection should we make sure to see?
Another piece I really love – which was a discovery even for me when I first joined the gallery – is by Laura Knight. It is a painting of a naked woman in Knight’s studio. You might look at it and think, okay, another nude model, but when she made it, women painters were not allowed to work from live, naked models – only men could. It makes you think about how artists can be radical in their own right. She questions, why can a man work from naked women but women themselves aren’t permitted? Are women not painters too? I just find these acts of micro-bravery fascinating. It reminds us of how important art can be in changing the way we perceive society, because they can be acts of protests in their own way.
Where else in London do you enjoy visiting for the art?
I love going to the Wallace Collection. I love getting lost. There’s also something quite beautiful about going to a museum that is outside of my usual remit of work. Because I specialise in modern and contemporary art, I find it gives me a lot of joy to go to places that are about artists like Rothko. It’s nice to enjoy art for the sake of enjoying it, for the pure pleasure of viewing it.
Outside of the galleries, where would you recommend spending time in London to feel inspired?
I love The Barbican. It offers this completely alternative, utopian vision of what a city could look like. It has everything here: gallery spaces, theatres, a cinema, outdoor spaces, restaurants, bars. I also love Sadler’s Wells. I love contemporary dance. Becoming completely lost in the movements offers a fresh perspective. They always have an amazing programme running.
Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels Lyon Opera Ballet, Merce Cunningham Forever: Beach Birds and BIPED, Image Credit Agathe Poupeney
How crucial is art to society and the city in London? Where would you like to see London’s art scene go next?
I think culture plays a huge part of what London is. And it plays a huge part in the London that I came to know when I moved here in 2010. London’s culture often feels like a crossroads between a lot of things: it feels a bit European and a bit American. It brings together the contemporary and the historic. It also feels like its own thing. In that sense, it’s thriving. I hope it continues to thrive. However, I do think London needs to create the opportunities for artists to experiment. It needs to keep being so receptive and open to different artists and people. I find this openness unique to London, and hope it always continues.
If you had to sum up London’s art scene in a few words, what would they be?
Exciting is a word that I would always use, and rich. Exciting and rich. Because the one thing I always think about London is on any given day, you could go and see something and it would be different from the previous day. There are very few other cities (perhaps New York is another) which have this rich offering all year round. London is a very special place that we’re able to live in.
Lead image credit: © David Parry/ National Portrait Gallery
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