Gallery loses top curator
One of the pre-eminent, and more amicable, curators at the National Gallery, Angela Tamvaki, passed away last Thursday during a period of heightened professional maturity and activity. She had put up a brave and spirited fight against cancer and maintained a busy schedule despite her faltering health. Born in 1945, Tamvaki studied archaeology at Athens University and history of art at Oxford University. A multilingual individual endowed with many talents, Tamvaki, who applied herself tirelessly to her work, specialized in presentations of Western art in Greece. She was head coordinator of the National Gallery’s European Art Collection department. Tamvaki’s career at the National Gallery began with a large and innovative exhibition on local exponents of naive art. She served at the National Gallery for 25 years, and unfailingly established fruitful collaborative ties with colleagues at all levels. The curator also forged important ties for the National Gallery with major European museums. Recent work by Tamvaki included organizing an exhibition on 17th century Dutch art. Her last project, which Tamvaki worked on until the very end, is a forthcoming exhibition titled «In the Light of Apollo,» to be presented in collaboration with the Lozzi Institute and its head curator, Mina Gregori. It is scheduled for late spring. Other projects included studies by Tamvaki that challenged existing art theories. Work on these had reached an advanced stage. Polite, pleasant and generous at all times, Tamvaki, as well as her husband, Yiannis Petropoulos, a philologist, often collaborated with Kathimerini, mostly with the newspaper’s weekend supplement, «Epta Imeres.»
