Eleanor Nairne is a curator based at the Barbican Art Gallery, where her exhibitions include Imran Qureshi: Where the Shadows are so Deep (2016), Basquiat: Boom for Real (2017-18), Lee Krasner: Living Colour (2019-20), Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty (2021), Soheila Sokhanvari: Rebel Rebel (2022), and Alice Neel: Hot Off The Griddle (2023). Internationally, she has curated shows such as Erotic Abstraction: Eva Hesse / Hannah Wilke (2021) at the Acquavella Galleries in New York. She was previously Curator of the Artangel Collection at Tate, organising more than 30 exhibitions and displays across the UK. She has written essays and reviews for The Art Newspaper, frieze, the London Review of Books and the New York Times, among others. She is a Trustee for Heart Club, an organisation devoted to neurodivergent artists.

Since joining Sotheby’s in 1988, Helena has been at the forefront of the global expansion of the Impressionist and Modern Art market. In addition to her role as Chairman, specialist and business getter, Helena also plays an important role on the rostrum at Sotheby’s. In July 2016, she became the first woman to take an evening sale since 1990, and she remains the only female auctioneer in the business to preside over these prestigious sales. A role model for aspiring female auctioneers, Helena has brought down the hammer on many landmark occasions (in New York in 2018, she brought down the hammer on the highest value work ever sold at Sotheby’s, and she has similarly presided over the highest value sale ever staged in London). As a classically trained violinist, with an innate sense of the performing skills necessary to command a room, Helena is at the vanguard of women in the art world who are blazing the trail in their industry.

Helena lives in Notting Hill with her husband, who is a musician, and their two children.

Simon Schama is an award-winning historian and the author of 19 books. He is currently University Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University and Contributing Editor of the Financial Times. His works include The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age; Rembrandt's Eyes; The American Future: A History; The Story of the Jews and most recently Foreign Bodies on the history of pandemics. He is the writer-presenter of 60 documentaries on art, history and literature for BBC television including films on Tolstoy, John Donne and Rembrandt as well as several acclaimed series including A History of Britain and The Power of Art, which won an International Emmy for the film on Bernini. He has received the American Academy of Arts and Letters award for Literature, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, and the Premio Antonio Feltrinelli Prize in historical sciences from the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.