Orati Irene (1956)

She was born in Athens in 1956 and studied at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Faculty of Philosophy, School of Archaeology and History of Art (1974-1978). She specialized in European printmaking at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung in Munich (1985-1986).
From 1980 to 1994 she worked at the Athens National Art Gallery - Alexandros Soutzos Museum, as curator of the Prints and Drawings Department and head of the library. During that time, she curated and organized all the exhibitions of the Printmaking Department (solo or retrospective shows of significant Greek artists, thematic or group ones with Greek and foreign artworks, photography and graphic art exhibitions, presentations of art collections, etc.). Moreover, she participated in the organization of other exhibitions of the National Art Gallery, in collaboration with institutions and museums from various regions of Greece and Europe.
In 1994 she worked for the auction house Christie's Hellas and in 1995 she became the curator of the Prints and Drawings Collection of the Ionian Bank. Since 1999 she is the curator of Alpha Bank's Art Collection. She has organized approximately twenty thematic or monographic exhibitions with the Collection's artworks throughout Greece, both travelling and city-based.
She has edited art books, albums, illustrations of textbooks and catalogues of thematic and solo exhibitions, while many of her writings have been published in collective volumes. She was a joint author of the Dictionary of Greek Artists (Melissa Publications, 1995-2000), and has authored a monograph for painter Spyros Vassiliou (2009). She has translated the Concise Oxford University Dictionary of Art and Artists (1997) and the book Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey (2003).