Alexander Robert "Sandy" Nairne CBE (born 8 June 1953) is a British museum director and writer. Since 2002, he has been the director of the National Portrait Gallery.[1]
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Nairne is the son of a senior civil servant, Sir Patrick Nairne, and studied at University College, Oxford in the early 1970s and rowed for the Oxford University second crew Isis.
Nairne came into contact with Nicholas Serota working at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1974–76.
After a period as an Assistant Curator at the Tate Gallery (1976–80) Nairne was appointed Director of Exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), a position he held until 1984 - exhibitions included "Brand New York," Robert Mapplethorpe, Mary Miss, "Women's Images of Men," and "About Time."
In 1987, Nairne wrote the television documentary series "State of the Art" for Channel 4. The series and Nairne's accompanying book acts as a follow on to the Robert Hughes series The Shock of the New and provides a critical survey of contemporary visual arts from America and Europe through the 1980s.
In 1988, Nairne was appointed as the director of the Visual Arts Department at the Arts Council. In this capacity, Nairne oversaw the re-invigoration of the British Art Show, the establishing of the Institute of International Visual Arts (InIVA) as a permanent organisation to promote culturally diverse projects, the furtherance of Percent for Art and the creation of the Curating Contemporary Art Course at the Royal College of Art.
In 1996, Nairne co-edited with Reesa Greenberg and Bruce W. Ferguson the book Thinking about Exhibitions (1996), a review of international practice in contemporary art exhibitions.
Nairne became Director of Programmes for the Tate Gallery under Nicholas Serota. In this capacity, Nairne was responsible for the restructuring of the Tate's collection administration in preparation for the opening of Tate Modern and the redevelopment of the original Tate Gallery in Millbank as Tate Britain.
Nairne was responsible for the successful recovery of two late J.M.W. Turner paintings, stolen in Germany in 1994, and put back on display at Tate Britain in early 2003.[2]
Nairne became Director of the National Portrait Gallery in 2002.
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 Birthday Honours for services to the arts.[3][4]
Nairne's wife is the art historian Lisa Tickner with whom he has a son and a daughter. His brother, Andrew Nairne, is the executive director of Arts Strategy at the Arts Council England. His other brother, James Nairne, Andrew's twin, is head of Art at Abingdon School in Oxfordshire.
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