Jo Vickery

Jo is the Co-founder and Director of Vickery Art. Prior to this she served as market leader at Sotheby’s auction house heading up the Russian sales as Head of Department from 2004-2014 where she staged the highest ever grossing Russian auction in the industry in 2007. Focussing on both private sales opportunities and the auction business she rose to the position of International Director of Russian Art in the European Chairman’s Office, giving counsel to the firm’s top Russian collectors in the field of both Russian art and International Modern and Contemporary art. In this position she was responsible for bringing record breaking works to auction and, on behalf of buyers, securing world auction sale records for blue-chip artists in the field of Modern European Art.

During her time at Sotheby’s, Jo initiated the firm’s first Russian Evening sales, and a host of new, pioneering auctions focussing on Contemporary Art from Russia, Eastern Europe and the former countries of the Soviet Union, bringing many young artists to the London auctions for the first time and creating numerous world auction records. She was also responsible for the sale of the legendary Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya Collection in 2007, a record- breaking private sale of the entire collection which now is housed in the presidential Konstantinovsky Palace in St Petersburg.

A Russian-speaking native Scot, Vickery was educated in Durham and Edinburgh and holds an MSc in Fine Art for her research into the 19th century Scottish portraitist Christina Robertson, who painted for the Imperial Russian family. She is executive editor of Frozen Dreams, Contemporary Art from Russia, published by Thames and Hudson in 2012. She has lectured at the National Portrait Gallery, London; Sotheby’s Institute; Eton College; the Cambridge Russian Society and in 2019 she was appointed to serve on the jury for the Kandinsky Prize. From 2014-2020 she was a member of REEAC, Russian and Eastern European Acquisitions Committee at Tate in London. Currently she is serving as Editor-in-Chief of Russian Art Focus, founded in 2018 by Inna Bazhenova and Dmitry Aksenov.