Natalya Polenova

Natalia Polenova (born July 12, 1975, Moscow) is a Russian museum expert and the director of the State Memorial of History, Art and Natural Museum Reserve - Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov since 2011. She is an expert on Russian painting from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a specialist of French culture and a member of the International Council of Museums (ICOM Russia). In 2018, she was awarded the title of Honoured Functionary of Culture of the Russian Federation in Tula. Family Natalia Polenova is the great grand-daughter of the Russian realist artist Vasily Polenov, member of the Itinerants (Peredvizhniki movement), and the great grand-niece of Elena Polenova, watercolorist and illustrator. Following in her parents' footsteps, Fiodor Polenov and Natalya Gramolina, and in that of her grandparents before them, Natalya Polenova takes over the management of the museum POLENOVO (usual name of the State Memorial of History, Art and Natural Museum Reserve Vasily Dmitrievitch Polenov) in 2011. She thus carries on the legacy of the founder artist and of the family traditions. She is married to the Russian poet Yuri Kublanovsky, who lived as a political exile for numerous years in France and who was awarded with the literary prize Soljenitsyne in 2003. She is mother of two children. Studies Polenova studied at the Faculty of Sociology at the Moscow State University|Lomonosov Moscow State University. She graduated in 1998 with a specialization in Public Relations. In addition to this, she took a course at the Gelos Auction House, an association specializing in antiquities, entitled "'Certification, identification and restoration" (1999). Subsequently she studied with the auction house Christie's on "European Art Market and History of the French Art" (Paris, 2006-2007), earned a Master in Museology at the École du Louvre (Paris, 2007-2010). Between 2010 and 2014, while working on her thesis, she continued her academic expertise at INSEAD with the "Team Management" course.