Dr Nicholas Penny

Director - National Gallery

Dr Nicholas Penny became Director of the National Gallery, London in February 2008.  He was Clore Curator of Renaissance Painting at the National Gallery between 1990 and 2000 before going to the National Gallery of Art in Washington where he was Andrew W Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and, from 2002, Senior Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts.  After obtaining his doctorate from the Courtauld Institute Nicholas Penny began his career as a lecturer in art history at the University of Manchester.  His first museum position was as Keeper of the Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.  Dr Penny is the author of many books and articles on both painting and sculpture and the history of collecting and of taste, including scholarly catlaogues, introductory texts for the student and critical reviews for the general reader.