Charles Saumarez Smith

Dr. Charles Robert Saumarez Smith (born 1954) is an art historian and museum director. For four years he worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London as head of research before becoming director of the National Portrait Gallery in 1994. There he more than doubled visitor figures by staging exhibitions by contemporary artists, including the fashion photographer Mario Testino. He also presided over the building of an extension to the Gallery in 2000, the Ondaatje Wing.

Since 2002, he has been director of the National Gallery. An early success of his directorship was the successful public appeal for the purchase of Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks in 2004.