About Us

Natasha Bonilla Martinez, MA is an appraiser and specialist of the art and photography of the United States and Latin America. She has more than 25 years of experience in the arts and culture arena as a museum curator, administrator, educator, and independent consultant, having worked with institutions such as the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation and the Oceanside Museum of Art. Most recently she served as Director of the Museum at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido. She was co-Curator of Spirit Capture: Native American and the Photographic Image at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution in New York. Ms. Martinez was educated at Vassar College and San Diego State University and holds Certificate in Appraisal Studies from the University of California, Irvine. She received the Rockefeller Guadalupe Fellowship for her scholarship on photography by Mexican and Chicana women on the U.S. Mexico border.

Lydia Thompson, Ph.D. is an appraiser and specialist in the art and archaeology of Asia. She has more than twenty years experience in the academic and museum worlds. She has taught at SUNY, Purchase, UCLA and UCSD, and has served in research and curatorial capacities for The Brooklyn Museum, The National Gallery of Art, The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, the San Diego Museum of Art and the Princeton Art Museum. She has written both general interest and scholarly articles and catalogs on Chinese art and archaeology. She received her undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Middlebury College and obtained her M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University, Institute of Fine Arts and has received awards for her scholarship from The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and the Kress Foundation for Art History. She holds a Certificate in the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP).

Consultant on exhibition; "Six Chinese Neo-Pop Artists" VC Fine Art