The former global director of Frieze art fair, Victoria Siddall, has been appointed director of the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in London, becoming the first-ever woman to take on the role. She will take up the post this autumn, replacing Nicholas Cullinan who left the position in June to become director of the British Museum.

Siddall was trustee at the NPG from July 2023 until this month. Prior to this she spent a year as a member of the gallery’s reopening committee during its extensive three-year refurbishment, which cost £41.3m.

“This is perhaps the most exciting time in the NPG’s history, following the recent reopening and Inspiring People project that the team delivered so flawlessly under Nicholas Cullinan’s leadership,” Siddall says in a statement.

Siddall is known for her extensive experience in the commercial art world. She was global director of Frieze, founding Frieze Masters in 2012 along with Matthew Slotover and Amanda Sharp. She subsequently led the Frieze art fairs across London, New York and Los Angeles. After securing the launch of Frieze Seoul in 2022, she became a non-executive director of Frieze.

She has also been chair of the board at the non-profit gallery Studio Voltaire in London. “As chair, she guided the organisation through a successful capital redevelopment campaign, greatly increasing the space dedicated to artist studios and public programmes,” says an NPG statement.

Siddall also co-founded Gallery Climate Coalition and Murmur, two environmental charities, and has worked with Tate in a strategic advisory capacity. In a speech given to graduates at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London earlier this year, she said: “While I hope you will keep the planet in mind in your careers, there are many other issues to work on where change would make a positive difference.

“Gender balance, for example, is something we have seen huge progress on even in the time of my career. When I started at Christie’s in 2000 [as Head of Proposals], women had only just been allowed to wear trousers to work, and there were certainly no women running the major London museums. This has improved radically in that we now have women in some of the top jobs in the art world and cultural sector.”

In an Instagram post published today (28 August), Cullinan congratulated Siddall on her new role. “…you will be brilliant and know the institution so well,” he wrote. “I’m so happy for you and this wonderful museum to have such a great woman at the helm, which is both exciting and historic!”