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Second time lucky for Gallery's new director
By Louise Jury, Evening Standard 26.11.07
Familiar face: Dr Nicholas Penny is to return from the US to take over the National Gallery in the spring. He was Clore curator of Renaissance painiting at the gallery for 12 years
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The British art scholar Nicholas Penny is set to be ratified this week as the new director of the National Gallery.
Dr Penny, 58, a graduate of Cambridge University and the Courtauld, will return to the UK in the spring from the National Gallery of Art in Washington where he has worked for the past five years.
However, he is a familiar figure at the National Gallery where he worked from 1990 to 2002 as the Clore curator of Renaissance painting.
He helped identify a painting at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland as Raphael's Madonna Of The Pinks.
He was later said to be furious when its owner, the Duke of Northumberland, repaid this detective work by selling the painting to the Getty Museum in California, although the Government blocked its export and the gallery eventually purchased it for £22 million.
Dr Penny has applied before for the post at the National Gallery but was beaten in 2002 by Charles Saumarez Smith, who has now left to run the Royal Academy. It is understood that he has proved victorious this time after interviews with a panel headed by Peter Scott, the gallery's chairman.
His long association with the National, which he joined from the Ashmolean in Oxford, provides him with the solid gallery and academic credentials needed to work with its band of scholarly experts.
One of the criticisms sometimes levelled at Dr Saumarez Smith was that he was not an Old Masters expert despite having a double first in art history from Cambridge.
The biggest problem facing the new director will be funding. His budgets will be far smaller than those of the National Gallery of Art in Washington where he is senior curator of sculptor.
Crucial will be the capacity to woo new benefactors to supplement the gallery's grant from Government.
Soaring prices on the art markets makes almost any new purchase for the collections a challenge.
Three months ago the National Gallery said it hoped to save five paintings by Nicolas Poussin valued at more than £100 million on the open market and on loan from the Duke of Rutland. But there is a question mark over whether it can raise the cash, even with tax breaks. There is also still spare space on the Trafalgar Square site that could be transformed into new galleries by any director with the energy and chutzpah to do it.
Dr Saumarez Smith admitted he would have loved to but settled for the satisfaction of opening the new £22 million East Wing.
National Gallery staff have not yet been told of the appointment which is awaiting ratification by the Prime Minister via the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which is considered to be a formality.
Dr Saumarez Smith's time at the National Gallery was clouded in controversy amid reports of a personality clash between him and chairman Mr Scott. Sources claimed the chairman wondered whether Dr Saumarez Smith was the right man to run the gallery with other trustees launching a counterattack, calling on Mr Scott to resign.
It was also said that the row between the two men was made worse by Dr Saumarez Smith's anger over the Government's refusal to give the gallery enough money.
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