Short answers, pulled from the story.
Tarnya Cooper is currently the National Trust's Curatorial and Collections Director, a position she has held since January 2018. In this role she oversees curatorial strategy, research, public engagement, and the care of collections and buildings across the Trust.
Cooper's DPhil thesis, submitted in 2001 at the University of Sussex, was titled "Memento mori portraiture: painting, Protestant culture and the patronage of middle elites in England and Wales, 1540-1630." It examined how Protestant middle-class patrons commissioned portraits as acts of religious contemplation and social expression.
Making Art in Tudor Britain was a seven-year scientific survey of Tudor paintings in the National Portrait Gallery's collection, led by Cooper during her time as 16th Century Curator. It used technical examination methods to reveal how Tudor painters and their patrons worked, and its findings were presented to the public in the 2014-2015 exhibition The Real Tudors.
Cooper curated Searching for Shakespeare at the NPG in 2006, Elizabeth I and her people from October 2013 to January 2014, and The Real Tudors from the 12th of September 2014 to the 1st of March 2015. She also co-curated Elizabeth I at the National Maritime Museum in 2003 with David Starkey.
The Getty Foundation awarded a grant to the National Portrait Gallery to enable Cooper to write Citizen Portrait, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art awarded her a senior research fellowship in 2010 that allowed her to complete the book.
Cooper received her MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1996, where she studied Dutch and Flemish art. She later obtained a DPhil from the University of Sussex in 2002.