Speaker

Syrago Tsiara was born in Larissa in 1968. She studied History and Archaeology at the Faculty of Philosophy of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki from 1985 to 1989. She went on to pursue postgraduate studies in the Social History of Art at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. She completed her doctoral studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, focusing on the role of public sculpture in shaping national memory, and was awarded her PhD in 2000. In 2002, she joined the State Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki) as Curator and Art Historian. Her work focused primarily on the research, documentation, interpretation and exhibition of the Costakis Collection of Russian Avant-Garde art, both in Greece and internationally. Alongside her museum work, she taught at the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly from 2003 to 2006. From 2007 to 2020, she served as Director of the Centre of Contemporary Art of the State Museum of Contemporary Art. Between 2018 and 2022, she was Director of the MOMus–Museum of Contemporary Art–Collections of the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art and the State Museum of Contemporary Art, part of the Metropolitan Organisation of Museums of Visual Arts of Thessaloniki (MOMus). During the same period, she also directed the Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art. She was Curator of the Greek Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. In 2022, Syrago Tsiara was appointed Director of the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum.