Victoria Marion Miro[1]OBE (born 1 July 1945[2]) is a British art dealer, "one of the grandes dames of the Britart scene"[3] and founder of the Victoria Miro Galleries in London and Venice.
Biography
Miro was born into a Jewish working-class family in London.[4] Her father ran a Covent Garden grocery stall. Her parents were keen on culture and saved, so the family could take holidays in Italy to see the art there.[5] She went to school at Copthall grammar school in North London,[6] then studied painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, which she says helped her understand art from the point of view of the artist.[4] For a short period during the early 1970s, she worked as a secondary school art teacher. She married businessman Warren Miro and had a son (Oliver) and daughter (Alex) in the 1970s.[6][5] She says she lost the creative urge during this period because she was "immersed in family".[6]
In 1985, when her children were old enough, she started her first gallery in Cork Street, London,[5] taking over the gallery space previously owned by dealer Robert Fraser (who was dying of AIDS).[6] In the late 1980s, she opened a second gallery in Florence, Italy, but shut it in 1991 after the art market slump. In 2000, her London gallery moved to a much larger 8,000 square foot (743 square meter) premises in East London.[5]
She has a reputation for integrity amongst clients; one of them, Arthur Goldberg, said, "She's a real quality person. That goes somewhere in the art world, where not every dealer can be trusted."[5] She is widely known within the art world but less so outside it,[5] and has been described as "the quiet woman of British art".[6] In 2001, despite her success, she rejected identification with the art establishment, saying "I like to think I still take risks in the gallery with younger artists. To me, 'establishment' just means dull."[5]