Advisory Committee

Michael Elliott was appointed interim Director of the National Portrait Gallery in May 2024. Michael has held several chief executive positions in the arts and culture sector and the senior civil service post of Director, Culture in DCMS. He was most recently interim Chief Executive for Arts Council Wales, and has previously been Chief Executive of The Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, and Associate Cultural Director for Liverpool 08 European Capital of Culture. Michael is a Pro-Chancellor of the University of Wolverhampton where he previously served as Chair of the Board of Governors and has been awarded honorary doctorates by both Sheffield Hallam and Wolverhampton universities. Mick is a past Chair of the Belgrade Theatre Coventry, Deputy Chair of the Crucible, and member of several school and further education college governing bodies.

Alex Farquharson has been Director, Tate Britain since July 2015. Prior to that, he was the founding Director of Nottingham Contemporary from 2007 to 2015. His background is in contemporary art, as a curator, writer and academic.

Alex is an Ex Officio member of the Committee.

Gabriele Finaldi has been Director of the National Gallery since August 2015. He was previously Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, a position he took up in 2002. Prior to his role at the Prado, he was a curator at the National Gallery between 1992 and 2002, where he was responsible for the later Italian paintings in the collection (Caravaggio to Canaletto) and the Spanish collection (Bermejo to Goya). Finaldi studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where he completed his doctorate in 1995 on the 17th-century Spanish painter who worked in Italy, Jusepe de Ribera. He has curated exhibitions in Britain, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the US. He has written catalogues and scholarly articles on Velázquez and Zurbarán, Italian Baroque painting and religious iconography.

Gabriele is an Ex Officio member of the Committee.

Eliza Gluckman has been Director of the Government Art Collection since January 2022. She was Deputy Director and Senior Curator from 2018 overseeing a new direction in public engagement through collaborations and initiating inclusive collecting through Art X-UK. She also conceived the Representation of the People Project, a ten-year commitment to assessing and addressing representation in the Collection. Previously she was Curator of the New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, the largest collection of works by women in Europe, and a co-founder of A Woman’s Place Project (AWP), where equality provides the contextual backbone to new commissions and projects. She has an MA in Fine Art and Curating Contemporary Art (Royal College of Art). Over the past 20 years she has worked in diverse arts environments including SPACE Studios, the RSA, Parasol Unit, Asia House, Victoria & Albert Museum and National Trust and programmed a central London gallery as part of an independent curatorial partnership, Day+Gluckman, for over a decade. She is a trustee for Block 336, an artist-run space in Brixton, South London and is on the curatorial steering group for Intoart, a studio that works inclusively with adults with learning difficulties.

Eliza is an Ex Officio member of the Committee.

Sir Richard Heaton became Warden of Robinson College, the newest college at Cambridge, in 2021, after a career in the civil service. He was Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office from 2012 to 2015, and Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Justice from 2015 to 2020. Richard is also Chair of Trustees at Koestler Arts, which promotes art and creativity in prisons and places of detention or supervision. He has for many years been an enthusiastic collector of modern and contemporary art.

Richard joined as Chair of the Advisory Committee to the Government Art Collection in 2023.

Nicola is Director of Cultural Diplomacy, Loans and Visitor Economy in DCMS. Nicola has previously worked in the Ministry of Justice where she led the Family & Criminal Justice policy directorate, including victims policy and commissioning, criminal and family courts, and criminal and family law.

Nicola is an Ex Officio member of the Committee.

Melanie Keen was appointed Director of Wellcome Collection in June 2019. Prior to this she was Director of Iniva (The Institute of International Visual Arts). As Curator at Iniva from 1997 to 2003, her projects included Soft: Artist as Curator, Janette Parris’ performance Mezzo Soprano?, Farah Bajull’s Untying the Knot, Yinka Shonibare’s Diary of a Victorian Dandy and Simon Tegala’s Anabiosis. She also curated Necessary Journeys, an Arts Council England / BFI collaboration which included artists’ residencies with Jackie Kay, Keith Piper, and susan pui san lok, commissioning a live film score by Courtney Pine presented in the Tate Turbine Hall.

Formerly, Melanie was a Senior Relationship Manager at Arts Council England and an independent curator and consultant.

Melanie is an independent member of the Committee.

Lisa Kennedy is a curator, historian and writer who advocates for the inclusion of wider perspectives within collections, artworks and the study of history. Lisa has worked with and across museums, galleries and cultural spaces, where her research interests focus on better understanding the relevance of these spaces to the widest audience possible. Recently, Lisa has worked with Art UK, the Bath & Colonialism Archive Project and University Arts London: Decolonising Arts Institute | Contemporary Art Society to support institutions addressing problematic language alongside accountability frameworks. Lisa’s practice centres on improving access to history, art, and culture from a socially engaged lens, while exploring the role of user experience research.

Lisa is an independent youth member of the Committee.

Ben Luke is the review editor and podcast host at The Art Newspaper and an art critic at the Evening Standard. He has contributed to numerous art magazines and written catalogue essays for institutions including the Royal Academy and the Whitechapel Gallery. Before becoming a critic he worked for many years in the Tate press office.

Ben is an independent member of the Committee.

Lindsey Mendick is an artist who works primarily with ceramics. She often embeds her sculptures within installations that include stained glass, film, furniture, large stage sets and performance. She received a BA from Sheffield Hallam University and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, London. Her autobiographical work offers a form of catharsis, encouraging the viewer to explore their own personal history through the revisionist lens of the artist. She was the recipient of the Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award in 2020, the Alexandra Reinhardt memorial award in 2018 and was also selected for Jerwood Survey in 2019 and the Future Generations Art Prize in 2020. Mendick has participated in solo and group exhibitions at Jupiter Artland, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Hayward Gallery, Carl Freedman Gallery, Somerset House, Jeffrey Deitch, Cooke Latham, Hannah Barry Gallery, among others. Alongside artist Guy Oliver, Mendick initiated Quench Gallery in Margate to provide vital support for early career artists through exhibitions and mentoring.

Elinor Morgan, curator and writer, is Artistic Director at MIMA, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. With projects including Fragile Earth and Why Are We Here? she has developed MIMA as an institution guided by its context and publics, informed by research as co-editor of The Constituent Museum (Valiz, 2018) on how arts institutions might work differently with their publics. Morgan shares obscured and overlooked narratives – art historical, social and ecological – and seeks to build ethical mechanisms to grow relationships and nurture equity. She plays a key role in shaping the development of arts and culture in the Tees Valley and is Co-Chair of Disability Arts Online. Prior to her time at MIMA, Morgan curated international public art projects, residencies, exhibitions, public and learning programmes, working at OUTPOST, Wysing Art Centre, Eastside Projects and on independent projects

Afua is a trustee for the Young Music Makers. Afua previously served on the youth advisory board of Childnet International and was also a young producer at the William Morris Gallery and a member of the Wallace Collection’s Wallace Youth.

Afua is an independent youth member of the Committee.

Mary Ann Prior is an Art Curator, Director and Advisor (Private and Corporate) with wide experience of event, exhibition and collection creation and management. She is currently Art Adviser/Curator for Bank of America (EMEA); and an independent researcher. Former roles include Curator to the Wilson Centre for Photography in London; Executive Producer of Eon Productions; Associate Curator of Photographs at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles; Art Advisor/Curator to Pfizer Inc, Bank of America and Camellia PLC. From 2009, she was Executive Director of Oklahoma Contemporary in the US, and its satellite gallery, Marfa Contemporary; as well as Director of Collections at Vulcan Inc, Seattle, a private company owned by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. At Vulcan, Mary Ann oversaw acquisitions and led high-profile art initiatives including the launch of the inaugural Seattle Art Fair in 2015; and a major touring exhibition ‘Seeing Nature: Landscape Masterworks from the Paul G. Allen Family Collection’.

Mary Ann is an independent member of the Committee.