Executive Master in Cultural Leadership

Programme Director of the Executive Master (maternity cover)
Dr Tim Smith-Laing is a lecturer and critic based in London. With a PhD from Oxford, Tim taught there from 2011-2014, focusing on literature, cultural history and the history and theory of criticism. In addition to teaching at the Royal Academy, he is a book critic at The Daily Telegraph, and writes on art for Apollo, Frieze, and the Literary Review. Since 2013, he has published on subjects ranging from Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Breugel to Two-Tone and The Monkees, as well as working in state primary schools for educational charity The Latin Programme. He is currently researching the cultural history of luck, and a novel based on the life of eighteenth-century sculptor Franz Xaver Messerschmidt.

Rebecca Salter PRA is an internationally renowned painter and printmaker. In 2019 she became the first female president of the Royal Academy in history. Before that, she was Keeper of the Royal Academy, a post related to the Royal Academy Schools. Salter studied at Bristol Polytechnic and Kyoto City University of the Arts in Japan, where she lived for six years. While living in Kyoto she worked using traditional Japanese woodblock printing methods with Professor Kurosaki Akira and has since written two books on the subject. Her interest in printmaking and drawing is combined with her primary practice in painting. She exhibits regularly, and her work is held in many public collections.

Secretary and Chief Executive
Before taking up the role of Secretary and Chief Executive at the Royal Academy of Arts in 2019, Axel Rüger was the Director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. During his tenure, from 2006 – 2018 he made it one of the most successful museums in the world, overseeing major renovations and a full redisplay of the collection, implementing new technological innovations and partnerships, and widening access. Visitor numbers grew from 1.4 million to 2.2 million a year. Axel studied art history in Berlin, Cambridge and Ontario and spent his early career in museums in the US. He went onto become curator of Dutch Paintings at the National Gallery, London in 1999, where he curated the highly acclaimed Vermeer and the Delft School and an exhibition on Aelbert Cuyp.

Photo Courtesy of Van Gogh Museum

Director of Collections and Learning
An experienced lecturer, writer and researcher in art history and the history of collecting, Rebecca Lyons has been the Director of the Attingham Trust’s Royal Collection Studies, for museum directors, curators and art world professionals, as well as a curator for the National Trust. Prior to this, Rebecca was Director of the Fine & Decorative Art MLitt and MA programmes at Christie’s Education, London/University of Glasgow where she taught for fifteen years. Educated at Oxford, the Courtauld and Cambridge, her most recent publications include an essay on 18th-century collector, Welbore Ellis Agar, for Getty Publications, 2019, and a chapter of the forthcoming Royal Collection exhibition book for George IV: Art and Spectacle, 2019.

Director of Development
Charlotte Appleyard oversees all fundraising and partnership activity at the RA, including major donors, Friends, corporate sponsors and capital campaigns. She previously worked at Outset Contemporary Art Fund, and in the curatorial departments at The National Gallery in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 2012 she published Corporate Art Collections: A Handbook, a history and survey of corporate collections. She is a trustee of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and a graduate of Oxford University, the Courtauld Institute and Harvard Business School.

Curator and Head of the Royal Academy Schools
Curator and Head of the RA Schools since 2006, Eliza Bonham Carter has extensive experience in art education. Previously, she was Head of the Department of Fine Art at the University of Reading, and taught at both Loughborough School of Art and De Montfort University. She has also been a visiting lecturer at numerous universities. Bonham Carter is a member the Faculty of Fine Art at the British School at Rome, and Vice-Chair of Camden Arts Centre. Between 2002-4, she was London and South East Regional chair of the National Association of Fine Art Education and steering group member. She studied Fine Art at Ravensbourne College of Art and Design and completed her MA at the Royal College of Art, and has exhibited her work widely.

Director of Exhibitions
Andrea Tarsia oversees the delivery and development of the Royal Academy’s world-renowned exhibitions programme. He trained in Art History and Film, specialising in post-war and contemporary art. Tarsia previously worked for the Institute of Contemporary Arts and the Whitechapel Gallery, among others, and curated many critically acclaimed international exhibitions. He has also contributed to numerous publications and scholarly catalogues and while at the Whitechapel, he helped devise and taught on an MA Course in Curating, in conjunction with London Metropolitan University. He has been a guest lecturer at several universities and art colleges across the UK.

Rachel is Professor of Arts and Finance. She obtained her PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2001, after obtaining a first class degree in econometrics and economics. Her research interests broadly cover the realm of understanding investor behaviour, with a particular focus on art markets and assets with an emotional attachment. Her work has been published in a number of international journals, including the European Economic Review and the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization, and has been covered by the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Times, and the Economist. In 2017, she authored the TEFAF art market report, as well as the more recent special issue of the Online Focus: Art Market Report. Pownall currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Money and Finance, the Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Economics, and Financial Research Letters.

Wim Gijselaers is Full Professor in Educational Research in the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University. His research focuses on educational innovation, social determinants of team cognition and team performance, judgement and decision making, including problem-based learning. He teaches on a range of leading postgraduate programmes in Maastricht and as a visiting professor internationally. Gijselaers is member of advisory boards at universities in Germany and Switzerland, and serves as chief editor of the Springer Book series Innovation and Change in Professional Education. He regularly consults for industry professionals and has presented workshops for companies on topics around innovation and change. He is the founding editor of the Springer Book series Educational Innovation in Economics and Business. He previously served as the Program Director of International Business and Associated Dean of Education. Currently he is the Chair of the Department of Educational Research and Development at the School of Business and Economics.

For use on EMCL page

Piet Eichholtz is a Full Professor of Real Estate Finance at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics and director and advises institutions in the field of public real estate finance. Eichholtz’s research interests lie in real estate investment funds, the growth in real estate values over the long run and the way in which commercial real estate markets are changing throughout the world. Previous research led to the “Herengracht Index”, the very first uninterrupted annual index of real estate from the 17th century onwards. In addition to this historical research, Eichholtz has also worked on international real estate investment including, for example, the structuring of international investment portfolios, risk management and ownership structures.

Schneider is a Professor in European Law at the Universities of Maastricht and Hasselt and holds a Jean Monnet Chair in European Migration Law. From September 2011 until December 2017 she was the Dean of the Faculty of Law, Maastricht University. As Dean she was actively involved in the setting up of the multidisciplinary research centres: Institute for Transnational and Euregional Cross-Border and Cooperation Mobility (ITEM), the Maastricht Centre for Citizenship, Migration and Development (MACIMIDE), Centre for European Research in Maastricht (CERiM) and the Maastricht Centre of Art and Culture, Conservation and Heritage (MACCH). In December 2017 she resumed her position as professor of European (Migration) Law and her responsibilities as part of the management and research team of ITEM, MACIMIDE, CERiM and MACCH.

Prof Dr Emile Sitzia holds a special chair at the University of Amsterdam and is an associate professor Cultural Education at the University of Maastricht. She specialises in museum participatory practices, the impact of art on audiences, word/image interdisciplinary studies (especially French 19th and early 20thcentury), and digital and sensory education. She focuses on issues of storytelling, identity and multimodality in space, in text and in images. In 2022 she co-edited the volume Participatory Practices in Art and Cultural Heritage: Learning Through and from Collaboration. In 2019 she was a co-editor for the Stedelijk Studies issue Towards a Museum of Mutuality. Recent relevant publications include: ‘The Many Faces of Knowledge production in art museums’ in Muséologies (2018); ‘The ignorant art museum: beyond meaning-making’ in International Journal of Lifelong Education (2017); and the co-authored article with Julia Ferloni “when the society museum gives power: challenges of participatory exhibition co-creation at the Mucem” in Culture & Musées 39 (2022).​

Prof. Dr. Rob Bauer is Professor of Finance (chair: Institutional Investors) at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics in The Netherlands. His academic research is focused on pension funds, strategic investment policy, mutual fund performance, responsible investing, shareholder activism and corporate governance. Rob publishes regularly in professional and academic journals and is a frequent speaker on national and international conferences. Rob is also Director of the European Centre for Corporate Engagement (ECCE) at Maastricht University, and Executive Director of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) in Toronto. Rob is also founder and managing director of Rob Bauer Consultants in which he advises and supports institutional investors on topics related to strategic investments.

Dr Donna Yates is an Associate Professor in the department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Maastricht University. Previously she was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Glasgow. She is a founding member of the Trafficking Culture research group.

A former Director of Christie’s UK, Jo has over 20 years’ experience in the art world. A graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford, Jo also holds an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Jo is the Director of the Ingram Collection, one of the UK’s most significant collections of 20th century British Art. Jo is a trustee of arts charities ArtCan and the Artists Collecting Society, is a member of the Association of Professional Art Advisors, the Association of Women in the Arts and sits on the board of Women of the Year. She has curated exhibitions at public galleries and museums across the U.K. In 2016 Jo launched the annual open submission Ingram Prize, which is now a leading prize for contemporary artists. Jo’s podcast series ‘Sculpting Lives’ , which she writes and hosts with Dr Sarah Victoria Turner of the Paul Mellon Centre, was listed as a top arts podcast by The Guardian, The Times and The Evening Standard Amongst others. She is editing ‘Modern British Art: New Reflections’, a major new book on 20th century British art which will be published in September 2022.

Kathryn Brown is a Senior Lecturer in art history and visual culture at Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Her publications span nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art, artists’ books, digital art history, contemporary art, and the art market. Her books include Women Readers in French Painting 1870–1890 (Routledge, 2012), Matisse’s Poets: Critical Performance in the Artist’s Book (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Henri Matisse (Reaktion, 2021), Dialogues with Degas: Influence and Antagonism in Contemporary Art (forthcoming, Bloomsbury) and (as editor), The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe (Routledge, 2013), Interactive Contemporary Art: Participation in Practice (IB Tauris, 2014), Perspectives on Degas (Routledge, 2016) and Digital Humanities and Art History (Routledge, 2020). Brown has held visiting fellowships at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (Washington DC), the Humanities Research Centre of the Australian National University, and Tulane University. Her research has been supported by numerous awards, including most recently from the Independent Social Research Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, and the British Academy. Brown is the series editor of Contextualizing Art Markets for Bloomsbury Academic.

Bernard Donoghue OBE has been the Director of ALVA, the UK’s Association for Leading Visitor Attractions, since September 2011 following a career in advocacy, communications, and lobbying, latterly at a senior level in the tourism and heritage sector. In 2017, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, appointed Bernard to be the Mayor’s Ambassador for Cultural Tourism and a member of the Mayor’s Cultural Leadership Board. He is Co-Chair of the London Tourism Recovery Board, created in 2021. He is Chairman of the Bristol Old Vic, the oldest continually working theatre in the English-speaking world, and became Chairman of the People’s History Museum, the Museum of Democracy, in November 2021. In January 2022 he was appointed Chairman of the National Trust’s Regional Advisory Board for London and the South East, the region with the most members and properties. He was Chairman of LIFT, the award-winning London International Festival of Theatre between 2010 and 2021. He was Chairman of the Council of WWF-UK for 10 years until 2020, and prior to that was an ambassador and a trustee. He is a former Chairman of VisitManchester, the Manchester Tourist Board; London Youth Matters; and, when a student, the British Youth Council. He is a former trustee of The Museum of The Home, London; the Heritage Alliance; Kids in Museums; and Centrepoint. He was a founder trustee of the Kaleidoscope Trust and has been an appointed member of the Cathedral Council of St Paul’s Cathedral, London, since 2009. He has been a member of the UK Government’s Tourism Industry Council since 2016. He was named by Blooloop in 2020 as one of the world’s 50 most influential people in museums, and in July 2021 won the public vote for the COVID Special Recognition Award from the UK Museums and Heritage Awards for his service to, and leadership of the museums and heritage sector in the UK during the pandemic.

Miranda Lowe CBE is a principal curator and scientist at the Natural History Museum, London with three decades of experience caring for historically and scientifically important natural history collections. Her engagement and work with creative industries allows her to link science, nature, and art to aid the public understanding of the natural world. She is part of the Museums Association’s Decolonisation Working Group and has published work that discusses how museum collections are connected to colonialism and how to best deal with these difficult histories. Miranda is a founding member of Museum Detox, network for people of colour working in the Museums and heritage sector, championing fair representation, inclusion, and deconstruction of systems of inequality. She is chair of Culture& - an independent arts and education charity that works in partnership with arts and heritage institutions and artists to develop programmes that promote diversity in the workforce and expand audiences. In 2013, Miranda was a finalist in the National Diversity Awards Positive Role Model Award for Race, Religion & Faith. More recent accolades include being listed in the BBC Women’s Hour Power List 2020: Our Planet and receiving The Society for the History of Natural History President’s Award 2021.

Revd Professor Keith Magee, ThD, FRHistS, FRSA is Senior Fellow and Visiting Professor of Practice in Cultural Justice at UCL Institute of Innovation and Public Practice and Centre on U.S. Politics, where he leads Black Britain and Beyond. He is also Professor of Practice in Social Justice at Newcastle University School of History, Classics and Archaeology. Keith has a professional career, of over three decades, in public theology, public policy, social justice and philanthropy. The Biden-Harris Administration’s US Ambassador to the Court of St James’s has appointed him to the U.S. – U.K. Fulbright Commission. He served as a Senior Religious Affairs Advisor with the Obama-Biden for America in 2008 and 2012. He serves as the Co-Chair of the Endowment Committee on the Board of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and Trustee of Facing History and Ourselves. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan appointed Keith as a Commissioner on Diversity in the Public Realm. As a dyslexic, one of his most significant accomplishments is being a co-creator of the Multicultural Initiative at Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. He is a CNN, NBC and BBC contributor—on issues of social justice, politics, race, and religion. He is also the author of Prophetic Justice: Race, Religion and Politics, January 2021.

Tonya Nelson was appointed London area Director of Arts Council England in 2020. She initially joined Arts Council England as the first Director of Arts Technology and Innovation, where she built on the work she did for the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) in 2017, under the leadership of Matthew Hancock MP, which resulted in the ‘Culture is Digital’ policy paper. She also sits on the board of trustees of National Gallery. She was formerly Chair of ICOM UK and The Bomb Factory Art Foundation. She is also a Senior Associate at AEA Consulting and acted as an Art World Professional Advisor for Christie’s Education. She holds degrees in Public Policy (Brown University), Law (Georgetown University) and Art History (Christie’s Education/University of Glasgow). She was formerly Director, Museums and Cultural Programmes at University College London (UCL).

Kevin O‘Hare CBE was born in Yorkshire, he trained at The Royal Ballet School from the age of 11 and was a Principal dancer of The Birmingham Royal Ballet. He retrained in Management with The Royal Shakespeare Company. He has moved through The Royal Ballet management team as Company Manager, Administrative Director and was appointed Director of The Royal Ballet in 2012. During this period Kevin has established The Royal Ballet as the world’s leading ballet company, commissioning new works, choreographic collaborations and engaging with new audiences.

Hannah O’Leary is a director at Sotheby’s auction house in London, where she runs the Modern and Contemporary African Art department. Ms O’Leary first joined Sotheby’s in 2005, initially working in the Dublin and Melbourne offices. In 2006 she joined Bonhams in London, where she helped pioneer the first international auctions of South African Art and Modern & Contemporary African Art, becoming Head of Department in 2010. With 10 years’ experience in this field, and having overseen record-breaking sales in both categories, she was delighted to return to Sotheby’s in 2016 to further develop this burgeoning market. Since then she has set more than 70 world record prices for artists from Africa, and recently oversaw the highest-grossing auction of Contemporary African Art of all time. Ms O‘Leary maintains close relationships with private collectors and public institutions alike, often advising on their collections and assisting with private sales and exhibition loans, including acting international consultant to the South African National Gallery. She has lectured on the subject of Contemporary African Art and Emerging Art Markets at events and institutions internationally, including the Royal Academy London, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, the Perez Art Museum Miami, the Art Summit Nigeria, AKAA Also Known As Africa art fair Paris, Padiglione d‘Arte Contemporanea Milano, Zurich University, the Sotheby’s Institute London, and the Venice Biennale. She holds a Master’s degree in History of Art with Cultural Anthropology from Glasgow University.

Eleanor Palfrey is the UK Art Curator for the Deutsche Bank Collection where she has worked since 2009. In her role, she is responsible for the artwork residing in the UK offices as well as regional gallery and museum partnerships. Prior to Deutsche Bank, Eleanor studied Art History at the University of Leeds and worked at Tate, the Serpentine and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Tim has been Deputy Director and Chief Operating Officer of the V&A, the world’s leading museum of art, design and performance, since 2013. Taking a strategic and operational overview of all museum activities, Tim is also leading the creation of V&A East in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, east London, which will see a new research and collections centre created alongside new gallery and exhibition spaces. He also leads the V&A’s international strategy and oversaw the opening of the V&A Gallery at Design Society in Shenzhen in 2017. Before joining the V&A, Tim was Director of Historic Properties at English Heritage. He is a graduate in Ancient History from Royal Holloway, University of London, and studied at the Institute of Archaeology (UCL) and INSEAD on its International Executive Programme. He is the V&A’s nominated director on the board of V&A Dundee, a trustee of Paintings in Hospitals and the Canal and River Trust, a member of the Hunterian Strategic Development Board and co-chair of the Exhibition Road Cultural Group.

Victoria Siddall is Board Director at Frieze. She has worked with Frieze since 2004 and previously held the position of Global Director, overseeing the running of all four Frieze Fairs in London, New York and Los Angeles. Siddall is a founding member and trustee of the Gallery Climate Coalition, a trustee of the Ampersand Foundation, and is Chair of the board of trustees of Studio Voltaire, a non-profit gallery and artist studio complex in south London.