Nevarte Essayan

Revealing the most personal side of the Gulbenkian collection, this exhibition explores the intertwined and interwoven stories of Nevarte Essayan’s life with the collection gathered by her husband, Calouste Gulbenkian. As the wife of Calouste Gulbenkian, she was known as the ‘richest woman in the world’ and, in private circles, the ‘life and soul of the party’. This is a rather superficial characterisation and one that raises two questions: who was Nevarte and in what way does she share in the Collection’s history? By bringing together objects that, having been acquired by the Collector, were mostly used to decorate Nevarte’s rooms in their London and Paris houses – after leaving Constantinople, where she was born in 1875 – it is possible to shed some light on her identity and life story.

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