N AT I O N A L C o n t e n t s P O RT R A I T F o re w o rd 3 B o a rd of Tru s t e e s 3 G A L L E RY The Collections 5 The Galleries 6 Photographs Collection 8 REVIEW Heinz Archive and Library 9 C o n s e rv a t i o n 1 0 2002/2003 E x h i b i t i o n s 1 1 Pa r tnerships and National Prog r a m m e s 1 3 E d u c a t i o n 1 6 I n f o rmation Te c h n o l o g y 2 0 Vi s i t o r s 2 3 Financial Report 2 5 R e s e a rc h 2 9 Tr a d i n g 3 1 Fundraising and Development 3 2 List of Acquisitions 3 9 S t a ff 4 4 3 F O R E W O R D This was yet another year of pro g ress and change with the entire staff of the Gallery in B o a rd of Trustees all departments playing their full part in the enhancement of the Gallery’s work, 2 0 0 2 / 3 Sir David Scholey, CBE reputation and popularity. They have once again earned the Trustees’ congratulations (C h a i r man) and gratitude. P rofessor David Cannadine, FBA, FRSL (Vice Chair The year’s attendances started with the continuing momentum of Mario Te s t i n o : f rom Febru a ry 2003) P o rt r a i t s which proved to be a resounding popular and financial success. The elegant and The Rt. Hon. Robin Cook, MP scholarly G e o rge Romney exhibition was a fitting finale to our Regency Galleries’ decor, (to March 2003) Flora Fraser (Vice Chair to which after long service had indeed become well worn. Our American sister, the National F e b ru a ry 2003) P o rtrait Gallery in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, lent us a magnific e n t Tessa Green (to July 2002) selection of paintings and photographs which will not be seen again for three years while Sir Max Hastings P rofessor Ludmilla Jord a n o v a its gallery is re c o n s t ructed. Once again the BP Portrait Aw a rd was the central feature of P rofessor Philip King, our summer programme. We are delighted that BP has renewed its sponsorship until CBE, PRA 2006. We finished the year with a remarkable exhibition of Julia Marg a ret Camero n ’ s Sir Christopher Ondaatje, CB E , OC innovative photography. Tom Phillips, CBE, RA Pr ofessor The Earl Russell, FBA In an acquisitions programme increasingly constrained by financial pre s s u res, two of our Sara Selwood (from May 2002) commission highlights were the brilliant painting of the composer Thomas Adès by Alexandra Shulman Philip Hale and the experimental watercolour double portrait of Sir George and Lady C l a i re Tomalin, FRSL Christie of Glyndebourne, commissioned by the Gallery from David Hockney and (to September 2002) Sir John Weston, KCMG g e n e rously donated by him. Balancing that musical theme, our most dramatic and highly (Chair of Audit and s i g n i ficant purchase was the splendid portrait of Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, by Compliance Committee) John Singer Sargent. Its cost was almost three times our annual acquisition budget and B a roness Willoughby de Ere s b y , DL we were able to buy it only thanks to the ready response of several of our most staunch s u p p o rters. Our need for such enlightened genero s i t y, for which we are deeply grateful, is bound to increase if we are to maintain the high standards of the collection. In June we bade farewell to Dr Charles Saumarez Smith after his tenure of more than eight years as our Dire c t o r. Charles’s contribution to the Gallery has been immense in e v e ry aspect. He retained and re c ruited curatorial staff of the highest calibre, he pre s i d e d over a pro l i fic and popular programme of exhibitions, acquisitions and commissions, and above all he planned and largely executed a comprehensive refurbishment of the galleries including the remarkable creation, almost out of thin air, of the Ondaatje Wing. Over those years the Gallery’s attendance increased from about 800,000 to over 1.4 million. Charles went to the National Gallery with our grateful good wishes and we are pleased to have a neighbour who knows and understands us so well. While we searched for a new Dire c t o r, our Chief Curator Jacob Simon assumed furt h e r responsibilities as Acting Dire c t o r, no mean addition to his already substantial burd e n . We are deeply grateful to him for the dedicated professionalism with which he oversaw the delicate period of transition, maintaining morale and momentum in the inevitable u n c e rtainty during an interre g n u m . o p p o s i t e Sir Brian Urq u h a rt, After a wide-ranging search which understandably attracted a large number of very well by Philip Pearlstein, 2002 Commissioned by the Trustees q u a l i fied applicants, we secured Sandy Nairne, who assumed the post of Director in with substantial support from N o v e m b e r. His educational background in history and his extensive gallery management a group of private benefactors 4 experience at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford and at the Tate during a period of dramatic growth and success have pre p a red him well for the task of building on the splendid legacy inherited from his predecessors. The energy and imagination with which Sandy has started bode well for the Gallery, our staff and our support e r s . T h e re has also been change among our Trustees. Of the appointed Trustees we have lost two and gained one. Claire Tomalin left us after ten years of invaluable commitment, not only in her fields of special historical and literary expertise but in many other aspects of our work. Tessa Green was able to be with us for only a short time before the demands of her other public and private responsibilities deprived us of her counsels. We miss them both and thank them warm l y. There has also been change in our Ex-Officio members, with the Rt. Hon. John Reid succeeding the Rt. Hon. Robin Cook as Lord President of the Council. In welcoming Sara Selwood as a new Trustee we much look forw a rd to b e n e fiting from her extensive knowledge and experience in the British cultural sector and g a l l e ry management. Finally, Professor David Cannadine has become Vice Chairman of the Trustees in succession to Flora Fraser. In the wake of last year’s Quinquennial Review on behalf of the DCMS, we awaited this year’s results of the government’s spending review with some anxiety. In the event we were as satisfied as we could reasonably have expected to be, with the promise of grant-in-aid increasing by 10% from April 2004. This of course still places great emphasis on the vital necessity of a successful external fundraising programme. We are admirably assisted in this endeavour by our assiduous and imaginative Development Board without whose very productive energies many aspects of our activity would not be possible. We thank them for all they do, under the stimulating chairmanship during the last thre e years of Charles McVeigh III who has now been succeeded by another devotee of the G a l l e ry, Amelia Chilcott Fawcett. Whilst we welcomed the government’s acknowledgment of the Gallery’s achievements and aspirations, we will inevitably continue to operate under considerable pre s s u re and u n c e rtainty given the increasing expectations and numbers of visitors which rightly ensue f rom success, together with the diverse demands now made on national museums and galleries, not least by government itself. Nevertheless we shall persist with our strategy to widen access not only in London but also, import a n t l y, in many other parts of the c o u n t ry, living fully up to our name – the National Portrait Gallery. David Scholey, CBE C h a i rman of the Board of Tru s t e e s 5 THE COLLECTIONS The outstanding acquisition of the year was John Singer Sargent’s great full-length p o rtrait of the Prime Minister, Lord Balfour, painted in 1908 for the Carlton Club. This masterpiece in the grand manner depicts the Conservative statesman Arthur Balfour, later Earl of Balfour, who was one of the pivotal fig u res in British politics from the 1880s to the late 1920s. Prime Minister from 1902 to 1905, and Foreign Secre t a ry for much of the First World Wa r, he informed British policy at home and abroad during his exceptional period of twenty-seven years as a member of the Cabinet. S a rgent’s portrait is a rich evocation of the period as well as being the most re m a r k a b l e re p resentation of this important fig u re in British history.