Alexander Sturgis comes across as someone who would easily fill a director's shoes at one of the establishment museums. He has the necessary academic background and the connections, but his career has taken a very different turn.
Having discounted an earlier expectation to enter the world of academia - he realised his 'mind wasn't of that kind', he opted to work in museums because 'it was about pleasure, about engaging and communicating with people'.
With teaching experience from his gothic cathedral design PhD at the Courtauld, he walked into an education officer job at the National Gallery 14 years ago and has been there ever since.
This month he makes the break with the gallery and London to move to Bath where he will head the independent Holburne Museum of Art with its definitive collection of silverware and Old Masters.
It's a move that Sturgis is more than ready for, though he expresses sadness at leaving the National Gallery and its paintings, which he says he fell in love with as a boy.
Sturgis spent the first eight years at the gallery as an education officer, teaching and running adult education programmes. He was also able to turn his hand to curating a couple of the National Gallery's temporary exhibitions and writing publications in and out of house. His activities didn't go unnoticed by the powers that be.
With Sturgis though there was no gameplan in mind. He didn't have his eye on a particular next job; on the contrary, he says that at this time in his life he felt quite unsure about his future.
He had tried to move out of the education department - in fact he had attempted on two occasions. He was interviewed for a curator role at Tate Britain and for the director's job at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
'That was a slight panic moment,' he remembers. 'I realised I was an education officer and that's how I was seen. And that's when the [education and curatorial] divide became most evident.
'There's a moment when it's unclear on how to develop your career beyond leaving [your job].' He says he began to wonder whether the only opportunity open to him might be to go and run an education department somewhere. As soon as the thought entered his head he knew it wasn't what he wanted to do.
He got his big break when Christopher Brown departed to run the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and left an incoming exhibition, Rembrandt by Himself, to manage and a Dutch touring exhibition to the regions to coordinate.
'It was at that point that I thrust myself forward,' says Sturgis. He was seconded to the curatorial department? And once there the jobs started piling up.
After working on the Seeing Salvation exhibition in 2000 with Neil MacGregor, the then director of the National Gallery, an even bigger break came along. MacGregor invited Sturgis to become his right hand man.
He took up the position as the director's curatorial assistant alongside his main job - the secondment, which had turned into the permanent exhibitions and programmes curator.
He also helped MacGregor on external affairs. He eased the director's workload by taking on duties such as research for lectures, statements and articles. He would brief MacGregor on his board duties and most notably they worked side-by-side on the policy during the setting up of the Regional Museums Task Force that led to the Renaissance in the Regions initiative.
As the exhibitions and programmes curator he was charged with developing the gallery's policy towards the regions (reforming its loan policy and processes) and he played a key role in creating the gallery's masterplan.
His curatorial endeavours took flight curating four Sainsbury Wing and six Sunley Room exhibitions as well as co-devising and overseeing the rehang of the Sainsbury Wing to mark its tenth anniversary.
'Doing exhibitions is one of the great thrills because it allows you to select pictures,' he says. There is clear delight when Sturgis talks about paintings coupled with a deep-seated and natural affinity to artworks.
He found particular value in working closely with the National Gallery's regional partners - the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle - curating five touring exhibitions including Making Faces and the current Stuff of Life.
He says he was able to experience the sense of ownership that the community has of their local museum.
He says it was an honour to be asked by MacGregor to undertake the role, but gives little away about the working relationship. Did it cause a rift with colleagues?
He says he was aware that colleagues may have been wondering why he was plucked from relative obscurity by MacGregor but, he says, he didn't let it affect him.
Xa, as he is known by his friends and family, has been described as fiercely intelligent and awe inspiring. He is cautious in his response to my questions but is also able to laugh easily.
He is an unlikely mix of relaxed but tense, and when he reveals his love of performance, you can immediately see a lightness, a playfulness helped along by his boyish appearance. He is that good example of the paradox of humankind: a traditionalist but with an appetite for spontaneity.
The sort of performance Sturgis refers to is his well established alter ego, The Great Xa. A magician by night and at weekends (and sometime gallery conjuror), he says his ability to delude went some way to getting his foot in the door at the gallery.
A pro, with an agent, he has performed for such luminaries as the late Prince Rainier of Monaco and Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. He says that working at private parties, clubs and pubs enabled him to pay for his PhD final year.
He was introduced to magic as a boy through a how-to set and christened The Great Xa by his brother when 'boring aunts and uncles with a show'. During his university years he busked around Europe with his magic.
So what sort of magic does he do? Is he a Paul Daniels-type? 'I'm more chaotic than Paul Daniels. It is supposed to be, well, it is funny,' he responds, 'It's off-beat.'
Sturgis says he promised himself early on to stay away from the obvious magic props when performing for adults and so opted for kitchen implements such as toasters and liquidisers. Now, utterly intrigued I ask where we can catch a performance? He says he has been known to play the Chelsea Arts Club in London.
Has he ever broken the magicians code of revealing the science behind the trickery? 'If you do tell someone they are so annoyed and disappointed that you gain nothing from it.'
He says the illusionism in art gives him 'an enormous thrill'. 'You look at the chandelier in the Arnolfini Portrait and you just cannot see how it has been done.'
His magic shows at the gallery were used to introduce children to the paintings and he says despite everything that he has done at the gallery since, people say they wished he would still perform. Now with a young family he does fewer events and more kiddies parties.
Sturgis, his wife and their three children have been visiting Bath to look for a home. The Holburne has had a troubled financial history, with its demise threatened in 2000 but since then, with a new board of trustees, it is getting closer to its public.
Christopher Woodward, the outgoing director, secured £4.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore, upgrade and extend the museum. Since opening in 1916 it has never been modernised.
Sturgis acknowledges that much of the groundwork has been done:
'You don't often take on a museum that is clearly on the ascendant.' Though he believes the Gainsborough paintings on loan to the museum have 'upped its umph' he says that the permanent collection needs rethinking in terms of attracting and engaging the visitors.
He singles out the British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a good example of interpretation, where artefacts come alive by focusing on the process of making and using objects.
He says making comparisons, such as porcelain made in different countries or at different times, is a powerful way of making people look.
Sturgis appears unphased about his lack of experience of people or financial management. He says that the staff numbers at the Holburne are small enough (ten he estimates) to be able to work on a personal level with each of them and 'build a sense of common purpose'.
His worry lies elsewhere. 'I do wait with trepidation to see what happens when I ring cold from the Holburne as opposed to from the National Gallery where you clearly have institutional weight behind you, which is easy to take for granted.'
As well as finding a new form of security he will also need an alternative way to relieve stress: 'When I'm fed up [at the National Gallery] I can always walk upstairs and have a look. To live with these painting for 14 years has been an extraordinary thing.'
Having discounted an earlier expectation to enter the world of academia - he realised his 'mind wasn't of that kind', he opted to work in museums because 'it was about pleasure, about engaging and communicating with people'.
With teaching experience from his gothic cathedral design PhD at the Courtauld, he walked into an education officer job at the National Gallery 14 years ago and has been there ever since.
This month he makes the break with the gallery and London to move to Bath where he will head the independent Holburne Museum of Art with its definitive collection of silverware and Old Masters.
It's a move that Sturgis is more than ready for, though he expresses sadness at leaving the National Gallery and its paintings, which he says he fell in love with as a boy.
Sturgis spent the first eight years at the gallery as an education officer, teaching and running adult education programmes. He was also able to turn his hand to curating a couple of the National Gallery's temporary exhibitions and writing publications in and out of house. His activities didn't go unnoticed by the powers that be.
With Sturgis though there was no gameplan in mind. He didn't have his eye on a particular next job; on the contrary, he says that at this time in his life he felt quite unsure about his future.
He had tried to move out of the education department - in fact he had attempted on two occasions. He was interviewed for a curator role at Tate Britain and for the director's job at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
'That was a slight panic moment,' he remembers. 'I realised I was an education officer and that's how I was seen. And that's when the [education and curatorial] divide became most evident.
'There's a moment when it's unclear on how to develop your career beyond leaving [your job].' He says he began to wonder whether the only opportunity open to him might be to go and run an education department somewhere. As soon as the thought entered his head he knew it wasn't what he wanted to do.
He got his big break when Christopher Brown departed to run the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and left an incoming exhibition, Rembrandt by Himself, to manage and a Dutch touring exhibition to the regions to coordinate.
'It was at that point that I thrust myself forward,' says Sturgis. He was seconded to the curatorial department? And once there the jobs started piling up.
After working on the Seeing Salvation exhibition in 2000 with Neil MacGregor, the then director of the National Gallery, an even bigger break came along. MacGregor invited Sturgis to become his right hand man.
He took up the position as the director's curatorial assistant alongside his main job - the secondment, which had turned into the permanent exhibitions and programmes curator.
He also helped MacGregor on external affairs. He eased the director's workload by taking on duties such as research for lectures, statements and articles. He would brief MacGregor on his board duties and most notably they worked side-by-side on the policy during the setting up of the Regional Museums Task Force that led to the Renaissance in the Regions initiative.
As the exhibitions and programmes curator he was charged with developing the gallery's policy towards the regions (reforming its loan policy and processes) and he played a key role in creating the gallery's masterplan.
His curatorial endeavours took flight curating four Sainsbury Wing and six Sunley Room exhibitions as well as co-devising and overseeing the rehang of the Sainsbury Wing to mark its tenth anniversary.
'Doing exhibitions is one of the great thrills because it allows you to select pictures,' he says. There is clear delight when Sturgis talks about paintings coupled with a deep-seated and natural affinity to artworks.
He found particular value in working closely with the National Gallery's regional partners - the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery and the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle - curating five touring exhibitions including Making Faces and the current Stuff of Life.
He says he was able to experience the sense of ownership that the community has of their local museum.
He says it was an honour to be asked by MacGregor to undertake the role, but gives little away about the working relationship. Did it cause a rift with colleagues?
He says he was aware that colleagues may have been wondering why he was plucked from relative obscurity by MacGregor but, he says, he didn't let it affect him.
Xa, as he is known by his friends and family, has been described as fiercely intelligent and awe inspiring. He is cautious in his response to my questions but is also able to laugh easily.
He is an unlikely mix of relaxed but tense, and when he reveals his love of performance, you can immediately see a lightness, a playfulness helped along by his boyish appearance. He is that good example of the paradox of humankind: a traditionalist but with an appetite for spontaneity.
The sort of performance Sturgis refers to is his well established alter ego, The Great Xa. A magician by night and at weekends (and sometime gallery conjuror), he says his ability to delude went some way to getting his foot in the door at the gallery.
A pro, with an agent, he has performed for such luminaries as the late Prince Rainier of Monaco and Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. He says that working at private parties, clubs and pubs enabled him to pay for his PhD final year.
He was introduced to magic as a boy through a how-to set and christened The Great Xa by his brother when 'boring aunts and uncles with a show'. During his university years he busked around Europe with his magic.
So what sort of magic does he do? Is he a Paul Daniels-type? 'I'm more chaotic than Paul Daniels. It is supposed to be, well, it is funny,' he responds, 'It's off-beat.'
Sturgis says he promised himself early on to stay away from the obvious magic props when performing for adults and so opted for kitchen implements such as toasters and liquidisers. Now, utterly intrigued I ask where we can catch a performance? He says he has been known to play the Chelsea Arts Club in London.
Has he ever broken the magicians code of revealing the science behind the trickery? 'If you do tell someone they are so annoyed and disappointed that you gain nothing from it.'
He says the illusionism in art gives him 'an enormous thrill'. 'You look at the chandelier in the Arnolfini Portrait and you just cannot see how it has been done.'
His magic shows at the gallery were used to introduce children to the paintings and he says despite everything that he has done at the gallery since, people say they wished he would still perform. Now with a young family he does fewer events and more kiddies parties.
Sturgis, his wife and their three children have been visiting Bath to look for a home. The Holburne has had a troubled financial history, with its demise threatened in 2000 but since then, with a new board of trustees, it is getting closer to its public.
Christopher Woodward, the outgoing director, secured £4.3m from the Heritage Lottery Fund to restore, upgrade and extend the museum. Since opening in 1916 it has never been modernised.
Sturgis acknowledges that much of the groundwork has been done:
'You don't often take on a museum that is clearly on the ascendant.' Though he believes the Gainsborough paintings on loan to the museum have 'upped its umph' he says that the permanent collection needs rethinking in terms of attracting and engaging the visitors.
He singles out the British Galleries at the Victoria and Albert Museum as a good example of interpretation, where artefacts come alive by focusing on the process of making and using objects.
He says making comparisons, such as porcelain made in different countries or at different times, is a powerful way of making people look.
Sturgis appears unphased about his lack of experience of people or financial management. He says that the staff numbers at the Holburne are small enough (ten he estimates) to be able to work on a personal level with each of them and 'build a sense of common purpose'.
His worry lies elsewhere. 'I do wait with trepidation to see what happens when I ring cold from the Holburne as opposed to from the National Gallery where you clearly have institutional weight behind you, which is easy to take for granted.'
As well as finding a new form of security he will also need an alternative way to relieve stress: 'When I'm fed up [at the National Gallery] I can always walk upstairs and have a look. To live with these painting for 14 years has been an extraordinary thing.'