James Birch (curator)
James Birch is an English art dealer, curator and gallery owner. He is best known for his innovative championing of British art, in particular for exhibiting Francis Bacon in Moscow, in the then USSR, in 1988, and Gilbert & George in Moscow in 1990, and in Beijing and Shanghai in 1993. Life and career Birch was born in London in . His parents were artists, and he had a brother and sister, both older than him. He was educated at the University of Aix-en-Provence, where he studied Art History, before training in the Old Master department of Christie's Fine Art in London where he later established the 1950s Rock & Roll department. In 1983 he opened his first gallery, James Birch Fine Art, on the King's Road, London, where he specialised in the work of British surrealists such as John Banting, Eileen Agar, Conroy Maddox and Grace Pailthorpe, the Symbolist and magician Austin Osman Spare and the artist and muse Luciana Martinez de la Rosa. In 1984 Birch gave the Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry his first show, with a second quickly following in 1985. Perry was a founding member of the Neo-Naturist cabaret with Jennifer Binnie, who Birch had