Nicholas Penny
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Nicholas Penny | |
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| Born | December 21, 1949 |
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| Nationality |  British |
| Occupation | Art historian |
| Spouse | Mary Crettier |
Nicholas Penny (born December 21, 1949) is a British art historian. Since Spring 2008 he has been director of the National Gallery in London.
Penny was educated at Shrewsbury School and St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and took his postgraduate studies at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. His academic career began with a research fellowship at Clare Hall, Cambridge, after which he went on to teach art history at Manchester University. While still in his early thirties, Penny was appointed the Slade Professorship at Oxford University and a Senior Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge. He was the co-author, with Francis Haskell, of Taste and the Antique, a study of the formation of the canon of classical sculpture published in 1984.
Between 1984 and 1989 Penny was keeper of the department of Western art at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. In 1990 he began a long association with the National Gallery, London, joining the institution as Clore Curator of Renaissance Painting. Shortly afterwards, in 1991, he identified the Madonna of the Pinks belonging to the Duke of Northumberland as a genuine Raphael, and not a copy of a lost original as was previously supposed. The painting came to public prominence in 2002 when the Gallery fought a major fundraising campaign in order to prevent the painting's sale to the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Earlier that year Penny made an unsuccessful bid for the directorship of the National Gallery, the post going to Charles Saumarez Smith. Again in 2002, Penny was appointed Senior Curator of Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Following Saumarez Smith's early resignation from his post, Penny was once again a candidate for heading the London National Gallery, and this time he succeeded.
Penny is a regular contributor to The Burlington Magazine and the London Review of Books.
[edit] References
- Maddocks, Fiona. "The National Gallery finds the right man", The Evening Standard, 27 November 2007. Retrieved on 2007-01-12.
- Jones, Jonathan. "Agent provocateur", The Guardian, 27 March 2008. Retrieved on 2008-03-27.
- Higgins, Charlotte. "Buy old masters, says new National Gallery head", The Guardian, 27 March 2008. Retrieved on 2008-03-27.
- 2002 press release from the National Gallery of Art on Penny's appointment as Senior Curator of Sculpture
- Balliol College News mentioning quondam fellowship of the college and appointment to the National Gallery
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by J. Mordaunt Crook |
Slade Professor of Fine Art, Oxford University 1980–81 |
Succeeded by Jonathan Brown |
| Cultural offices | ||
| Preceded by Charles Saumarez Smith |
Director of the National Gallery 2008 – present |
Incumbent |
