Peggy Guggenheim and Women-Patrons of the Avant-Garde: Paris, London, St. Petersburg

This lecture explores the powerful yet often overlooked role of women patrons in shaping the early twentieth-century avant-garde, focusing on the transnational networks that linked Paris, London, and St. Petersburg. At its center is Peggy Guggenheim, whose fearless collecting and support of experimental artists helped define modern art in Europe and the United States. Situating Guggenheim alongside earlier and contemporary women patrons such as Berthe Weill, Davies Sisters and Nadezhda Dobychina, the lecture examines how salons, galleries, and personal networks created alternative infrastructures for avant-garde art. Moving between Paris, London, and St. Petersburg, it reveals how women collectors, hosts, and cultural intermediaries not only financed radical art but also shaped its reception, circulation, and legacy. By foregrounding their agency, the lecture reframes the history of modernism as a collaborative project in which patronage, gender, and international exchange were deeply intertwined.

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Peggy Guggenheim

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Dr Natalia Murray

Natalia Murray was born in St Petersburg where she gained BA and MA in the History of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts before taking the PhD course at the Hermitage Museum.

In 2015 she was awarded a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art.

At present she works as an independent curator and an associate lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art where she teaches her MA course on the role of the exhibitions and private collections in Europe in 1863-1930.

In 2017 she curated a major exhibition Revolution. Russian Art. 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. She is currently working on several exhibition projects in London, Paris and US. Her latest exhibition The World as Non-Objective. The Birth of a New Art which traces development of the new abstract art from Chagall to Malevich, was opened with high acclaim at the Jewish museum in Moscow in November 2022.

Her most recent books include Two Women Patrons of the Russian Avant-Garde. Nadezhda Dobychina and Klavdia Mikhailova (Unicorn, 2021) and Art for the Workers. Proletarian Art and Festive Decorations of Petrograd. 1917-1920 (Brill, 2018).

Her books and articles extend across the wide field of 19-20 century European art, and she has featured in films and art programmes on BBC 4, BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. Natalia is also trustee of the Avant-Garde Art Research Project - a UK-based charity which shares one of her aspirations to reduce the number of fakes on the art market.

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