Charles Saumarez Smith

Dr. Charles Robert Saumarez Smith (born May 28, 1954 in Redlynch, Wiltshire) 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 NPG in 2000, the Ondaatje Wing.

He was passed over for major managerial jobs at the V&A, the Tate Gallery and the British Museum before becoming the director of the National Gallery 2002. An early success of his directorship was the successful public appeal for the purchase of Raphael's Madonna of the Pinks in 2004. As of 2006 he is overseeing extensions to the National Gallery by Dixon Jones architects, who also designed the Ondaatje Wing (although this project was begun by his predecessor Neil MacGregor). Saumarez Smith is an occasional panellist on the BBC's Newsnight Review.

External link

Profile of Saumarez Smith in The Guardian