The trustees of the National Gallery, London, have appointed Tony Hall of Birkenhead as the chair of the board. Hall will take over from John Kingman, who has been interim chair since Hannah Rothschild stood down from the role in September 2019. Hall is currently the director-general of the BBC and the former chief executive of the Royal Opera House, London.
René Olivieri has been appointed interim chair of the National Lottery Heritage Fund and National Heritage Memorial Fund. Olivieri, a member of the Heritage Fund board since March 2018 was the chief executive of the international scientific and scholarly publisher, Blackwell Publishing.
The Foundling Museum, London, has two new trustees: Simon Russell, who spent 25 years as a partner at leadership consulting firm Spencer Stuart; and Claire Jeffers, an executive director in the Consumer and Investment Management division of Goldman Sachs, where she has worked since 2006.
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA), London, has elected the artist Rana Begum as a Royal Academician in the category of painting. The following have also been elected as professors by the RA: Mali Morris (professor of painting), Mike Nelson (professor of sculpture), Bronwyn Ormsby (professor of chemistry) and Charles Saumarez Smith (professor of architectural history).
The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) has recruited Duncan Forbes as its director of photography. Forbes, who takes up the role in April, will lead the V&A’s team of photography curators and, develop phase two of the organisation’s Photography Centre and carry out cataloguing and digitisation programme to further enhance public access to the V&A’s photography collections.
The Board of Trustees of Watts Gallery has appointed two new trustees: Dame Magdalene Odundo and Malcolm Rogers. The appointments are for up to two terms of five years from 2019. Odundo is a ceramic artist, who received her early education in India and Kenya before moving to England in 1971. Rogers is a University of Oxford graduate and art historian with an expertise in portraiture. For several years he was the deputy director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, before moving to the US to work at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.
The Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust has appointed Duncan Wilson, chief executive of Historic England, to its board. Wilson took up the post at the trust’s next board meeting on 27 February. Wilson has held a range of senior positions in the heritage sector, including chief executive of the Alexandra Park and Palace Trust and chief executive at the Greenwich Foundation for the Old Royal Naval College.
