Constantia Nicolaides

Job description

As an Assistant Curator for Cross-Collections on the Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture project, I have been closely involved in increasing the visibility of women within the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection through a variety of activities. These have included acquiring portraits of notable women who were previously not represented at the Gallery, leading on coordinating the project’s website content to showcase our work and new research, working on commissions such as Jann Haworth and Liberty Blake’s Work in Progress (2021-2) mural featuring 130 women, contributing to displays and writing for publications.

Prior to this, I worked as a Photographs Cataloguer and Assistant Curator within the Gallery’s Photographs department, where I was responsible for researching, cataloguing and caring for negatives and prints from its vast archive, including photographs by the Bassano studio and Camille Silvy’s daybooks. Displays I curated included Francis Goodman: Back in Focus (2013), Setting the Scene: Staging and Backdrops in Studio Photographs (2016), Photography: A Living Art – Then and Now (2018) and John Stezaker: Portrait (2019).

Biography

I studied History of Art at the University of Sussex with a focus on modern and contemporary art, photography and visual culture, and joined the National Portrait Gallery in 2003.

Research interests

In addition to highlighting the stories of women artists and sitters, I have a special interest in Victorian portrait photography, particularly from the heyday of the carte-de-visite.

Recent publications

Flavia Frigeri, Georgia Atienza and Constantia Nicolaides (eds.), Women at Work: 1900 to Now (National Portrait Gallery, London, 2023)

Lady Frances Jocelyn in Luce Lebart and Marie Robert (eds.), A World History of Women Photographers (Thames and Hudson, London, 2022, and French edition, 2020)

Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson in Lucy Peltz and Louise Stewart (eds.), Love Stories: Art, Passion & Tragedy (National Portrait Gallery, London, 2020)

Captions in 100 Fashion Icons (National Portrait Gallery, London, 2019)

Entries in National Portrait Gallery: A Portrait of Britain (National Portrait Gallery, London, 2014)