It seems fitting when I visit Kathleen Soriano at her National Portrait Gallery (NPG) office that a book about stately homes is by her feet. How the public use stately homes is something Soriano will have to get to grips with when she takes over as the director of Compton Verney in Warwickshire.
Compton Verney, the 120 acres of parkland with an art gallery attached, couldn't be further from the urban setting of the NPG where up until last month Soriano was the head of exhibitions and collections management.
But the aptness of the book is short-lived because she starts to talk about her plans to bring the art gallery out of its stately home image and into an experience more in line with most other UK museums and art galleries. One aim is to open the gallery for a full 12 months as opposed to its current half-yearly closure.
When Compton Verney opened its doors as a gallery space for the first time in 2004, Soriano was just enrolling as a Clore Fellow, the leadership training programme that catapults managers to top-notch positions in the cultural sector. Soriano says it is a 'surprise' to walk from the Capability Brown-designed grounds up to the mansion and to open its doors onto a state-of-the-art gallery.
The collection is divided into six areas, including Chinese bronzes and British folk art. The collection was put together by Peter Moores, a former head of gaming and retailing company Littlewoods, whose foundation bought Compton Verney in 1993.
Soriano had been looking for a chance like this for some time. 'I feel incredibly lucky that I am walking into a gallery that is in perfect condition.' Her first job was in education and exhibitions at London's Royal Academy of Arts, where she worked closely with the permanent collections and was also able to dip into many areas of running a gallery, including fundraising and organising loans.
She then joined the exhibitions department at the NPG where she stayed for 17 years. She realised early on she wasn't a natural educator and had ruled out a curatorial role. She was more at home in an administrative capacity, though she has always enjoyed working alongside curators.
She emphasises a respect for experts and their knowledge, adding that there is nothing wrong with scholarship and that she is against its recent demonisation.
After seven years she moved into management, overseeing the running of the exhibitions, collections, national programmes, conservation, art handling and design departments. She says she successfully championed the setting up of a national programmes department ahead of most other national museums.
And it is that latter aspect she appears most proud of. Outreach to the regional and international museum community, objects on loan and touring exhibitions have been a vital part of the NPG's and Soriano's development. She made invaluable contacts in the UK and abroad as the chairwoman of the Touring Exhibitions Group between 2002-03.
The regional partnership work appears of particular importance and she recalls the Living Lives exhibitions at the Nottingham Castle Museum in 2003, which saw community groups 'rummaging through' the NPG's photo collection. She talks of it as though she was in there rummaging with them.
It was her idea for a major restructuring of her departments (without redundancies), which she says has resulted in a more efficient workforce and had the full cooperation of the staff. She presents herself as a hard and fast decision-maker, and at first glance there is a severity about her, but that falls away fairly rapidly and a softer edge takes over.
Soriano says her management style is one of promoting teamwork and above all listening and developing direction as a group. One of the benefits of the Clore programme was that it gave her faith in her management style. 'The Clore helped me not to feel guilty about the sort of leader I am.' Even so, she feels it necessary to qualify that statement: 'I have to say that this style isn't uniquely female.'
There is no surprise that after 17 years at the NPG, Soriano began to look around at MBA qualifications and other courses to take her to the next level. But she says nothing seemed to suit her. When the Clore was announced it captured her imagination with its ability to 'take her out of her art pocket'.
She says the most important things the Clore offered were access to leaders in the sector and training opportunities. Soriano took on two four-month placements, one at the South Bank Centre in London (supporting the chief executive) and the other at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.
The latter she spent researching her dissertation on the impact that project funding has on core function. She compared the art gallery in Sydney with Tate Britain to reach her conclusions. She admits to an assumption that project funding was more of a hindrance than a help.
But she found that project funding can challenge thinking and help an organisation focus and set goals. The Clore helped her to step back and consider the bigger picture, she says, and resist jumping to an opinion too quickly.
Her experience in Sydney also allowed her to compare the running of the gallery there with her own. In Australia she saw a team in an organisation the size of the NPG that managed to be close-knit. She hints (but refuses to confirm) that this is an area in which the NPG is left wanting.
She also sidesteps an overly personal take on the two charismatic leaders that she worked with at the NPG: the former director, Charles Saumarez Smith, and the current director, Sandy Nairne.
She says Saumarez Smith steered the organisation through change and encouraged staff to focus on audiences and to take risks, particularly in the display of collections.
But it is Nairne's influence that seems to have rubbed off most. She says he entered with a 'burst of energy and enthusiasm that energised' the organisation. She describes Nairne as 'aspirational', motivating the gallery to look outside itself, particularly internationally.
And it is being aspirational that Soriano places great value on. She doesn't have role models but says there are 'stars' in the arts world and they are the ones that 'move things forward and keep questioning and are open enough to learn from other sectors, but single no one out for fear of neglecting and offending them'.
But there are risks to being an aspirational organisation: 'The NPG has always been a can-do organisation. We have the idea and run with it before we admit to ourselves how onerous it is. We are victims of our enthusiasm.'
She reveals this is particularly true in regards to the regional touring programme. There is an issue about spreading the staff too thin: 'We then find we are not always best placed to make the best of it from a profile or marketing point of view.'
Though Compton Verney is backed by Moores' millions, there will be financial and personal challenges ahead for Soriano. Her priority will be to get to know the local audience, the local community and the region.
She doesn't underestimate the likelihood that she will feel like a duck out of water, grappling to improve the transport to Compton Verney's door, to get better motorway signage, and to put the mansion's acres to good use while managing a team of 60 - more than double what she is used to.
She will also be trying to address perhaps one of the most difficult issues: 'I want to start getting the new message across that Compton Verney isn't being bankrolled by one foundation.' The whopping £21m invested by Moores for the initial building project will make that an uphill task.
It costs £2m each year to run the whole organisation and some 20 per cent of that is self-generated. And there are plans to increase that to 40 per cent over the next five years. Likewise, the visitor figures, currently at 40,000 a year have to be pushed to between 60,000-75,000.
The Peter Moores Foundation has funded the core revenue and collections to date and Moores continues to collect his particular passions: Neapolitan paintings and Chinese bronzes. (Another challenge for Soriano will be to accommodate the new acquisitions into the space.)
Fundraising for the educational and temporary exhibition programme will continue. 'One thing for me is to have a more entrepreneurial approach to the running of the gallery,' says Soriano. 'In a way I've got an appetite for it. My family is in the restaurant business so that whole notion of income generation isn't a dirty word to me.'
Her ideas range from using the chapel on the grounds for weddings and christenings to developing the land for ecological and sustainable use.
Unsurprisingly she is keen to set up a long-term loans programmes and has already approached the British Museum about the Chinese bronzes and the American Folk Art Museum in New York in relation to Compton Verney's folk art collection.
When the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition (in partnership with the National Galleries of Scotland) opens at the end of this month, Soriano will be travelling from her new Oxford home where she decided to settle with her family to the gallery. And eyes will be watching to see how well she fits in with her new manor - the beautiful house in the park.
Compton Verney, the 120 acres of parkland with an art gallery attached, couldn't be further from the urban setting of the NPG where up until last month Soriano was the head of exhibitions and collections management.
But the aptness of the book is short-lived because she starts to talk about her plans to bring the art gallery out of its stately home image and into an experience more in line with most other UK museums and art galleries. One aim is to open the gallery for a full 12 months as opposed to its current half-yearly closure.
When Compton Verney opened its doors as a gallery space for the first time in 2004, Soriano was just enrolling as a Clore Fellow, the leadership training programme that catapults managers to top-notch positions in the cultural sector. Soriano says it is a 'surprise' to walk from the Capability Brown-designed grounds up to the mansion and to open its doors onto a state-of-the-art gallery.
The collection is divided into six areas, including Chinese bronzes and British folk art. The collection was put together by Peter Moores, a former head of gaming and retailing company Littlewoods, whose foundation bought Compton Verney in 1993.
Soriano had been looking for a chance like this for some time. 'I feel incredibly lucky that I am walking into a gallery that is in perfect condition.' Her first job was in education and exhibitions at London's Royal Academy of Arts, where she worked closely with the permanent collections and was also able to dip into many areas of running a gallery, including fundraising and organising loans.
She then joined the exhibitions department at the NPG where she stayed for 17 years. She realised early on she wasn't a natural educator and had ruled out a curatorial role. She was more at home in an administrative capacity, though she has always enjoyed working alongside curators.
She emphasises a respect for experts and their knowledge, adding that there is nothing wrong with scholarship and that she is against its recent demonisation.
After seven years she moved into management, overseeing the running of the exhibitions, collections, national programmes, conservation, art handling and design departments. She says she successfully championed the setting up of a national programmes department ahead of most other national museums.
And it is that latter aspect she appears most proud of. Outreach to the regional and international museum community, objects on loan and touring exhibitions have been a vital part of the NPG's and Soriano's development. She made invaluable contacts in the UK and abroad as the chairwoman of the Touring Exhibitions Group between 2002-03.
The regional partnership work appears of particular importance and she recalls the Living Lives exhibitions at the Nottingham Castle Museum in 2003, which saw community groups 'rummaging through' the NPG's photo collection. She talks of it as though she was in there rummaging with them.
It was her idea for a major restructuring of her departments (without redundancies), which she says has resulted in a more efficient workforce and had the full cooperation of the staff. She presents herself as a hard and fast decision-maker, and at first glance there is a severity about her, but that falls away fairly rapidly and a softer edge takes over.
Soriano says her management style is one of promoting teamwork and above all listening and developing direction as a group. One of the benefits of the Clore programme was that it gave her faith in her management style. 'The Clore helped me not to feel guilty about the sort of leader I am.' Even so, she feels it necessary to qualify that statement: 'I have to say that this style isn't uniquely female.'
There is no surprise that after 17 years at the NPG, Soriano began to look around at MBA qualifications and other courses to take her to the next level. But she says nothing seemed to suit her. When the Clore was announced it captured her imagination with its ability to 'take her out of her art pocket'.
She says the most important things the Clore offered were access to leaders in the sector and training opportunities. Soriano took on two four-month placements, one at the South Bank Centre in London (supporting the chief executive) and the other at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.
The latter she spent researching her dissertation on the impact that project funding has on core function. She compared the art gallery in Sydney with Tate Britain to reach her conclusions. She admits to an assumption that project funding was more of a hindrance than a help.
But she found that project funding can challenge thinking and help an organisation focus and set goals. The Clore helped her to step back and consider the bigger picture, she says, and resist jumping to an opinion too quickly.
Her experience in Sydney also allowed her to compare the running of the gallery there with her own. In Australia she saw a team in an organisation the size of the NPG that managed to be close-knit. She hints (but refuses to confirm) that this is an area in which the NPG is left wanting.
She also sidesteps an overly personal take on the two charismatic leaders that she worked with at the NPG: the former director, Charles Saumarez Smith, and the current director, Sandy Nairne.
She says Saumarez Smith steered the organisation through change and encouraged staff to focus on audiences and to take risks, particularly in the display of collections.
But it is Nairne's influence that seems to have rubbed off most. She says he entered with a 'burst of energy and enthusiasm that energised' the organisation. She describes Nairne as 'aspirational', motivating the gallery to look outside itself, particularly internationally.
And it is being aspirational that Soriano places great value on. She doesn't have role models but says there are 'stars' in the arts world and they are the ones that 'move things forward and keep questioning and are open enough to learn from other sectors, but single no one out for fear of neglecting and offending them'.
But there are risks to being an aspirational organisation: 'The NPG has always been a can-do organisation. We have the idea and run with it before we admit to ourselves how onerous it is. We are victims of our enthusiasm.'
She reveals this is particularly true in regards to the regional touring programme. There is an issue about spreading the staff too thin: 'We then find we are not always best placed to make the best of it from a profile or marketing point of view.'
Though Compton Verney is backed by Moores' millions, there will be financial and personal challenges ahead for Soriano. Her priority will be to get to know the local audience, the local community and the region.
She doesn't underestimate the likelihood that she will feel like a duck out of water, grappling to improve the transport to Compton Verney's door, to get better motorway signage, and to put the mansion's acres to good use while managing a team of 60 - more than double what she is used to.
She will also be trying to address perhaps one of the most difficult issues: 'I want to start getting the new message across that Compton Verney isn't being bankrolled by one foundation.' The whopping £21m invested by Moores for the initial building project will make that an uphill task.
It costs £2m each year to run the whole organisation and some 20 per cent of that is self-generated. And there are plans to increase that to 40 per cent over the next five years. Likewise, the visitor figures, currently at 40,000 a year have to be pushed to between 60,000-75,000.
The Peter Moores Foundation has funded the core revenue and collections to date and Moores continues to collect his particular passions: Neapolitan paintings and Chinese bronzes. (Another challenge for Soriano will be to accommodate the new acquisitions into the space.)
Fundraising for the educational and temporary exhibition programme will continue. 'One thing for me is to have a more entrepreneurial approach to the running of the gallery,' says Soriano. 'In a way I've got an appetite for it. My family is in the restaurant business so that whole notion of income generation isn't a dirty word to me.'
Her ideas range from using the chapel on the grounds for weddings and christenings to developing the land for ecological and sustainable use.
Unsurprisingly she is keen to set up a long-term loans programmes and has already approached the British Museum about the Chinese bronzes and the American Folk Art Museum in New York in relation to Compton Verney's folk art collection.
When the Van Gogh and Britain exhibition (in partnership with the National Galleries of Scotland) opens at the end of this month, Soriano will be travelling from her new Oxford home where she decided to settle with her family to the gallery. And eyes will be watching to see how well she fits in with her new manor - the beautiful house in the park.
