Charles Saumarez Smith
Charles Saumarez Smith was Director of the National Gallery from 2002-2007, during which time he was in charge of the acclaimed campaign to save Raphael’s Madonna of the Pinks for the nation and also presided over the successful East Wing development.
Born in outside Salisbury in 1954, he was educated at Marlborough and King’s College, Cambridge, where he was a scholar and got a double first in history and history of art. After graduating, he spent a year at Harvard University as a Henry Fellow studying at the Fogg Art Museum and then returned to the Warburg Institute as a postgraduate student. In 1979, he was elected Christie’s Research Fellow at Christ’s College, Cambridge and, in 1982, he joined the staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum as an Assistant Keeper with special responsibility for V&A/RCA MA in the History of Design, where he went on to become Head of Research in 1990. In 1994, he was appointed Director of the National Portrait Gallery, before moving to the National Gallery in 2000. He has been President of the Museums Association and Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford.
He is now Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts and was awarded a CBE in 2008. His book, The National Gallery: A Short History, is a behind the scenes look at the enduring tensions through the centuries between the management and the board that have always been a feature of the National Gallery.