From the December 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
The boards of museums in the United Kingdom rarely receive much attention. There is both good reason and tradition for this. Until about 40 years ago a board – unlike in the United States – was focused on running the museum, rather than fundraising. The idea that a British board member should personally commit to a phone-number-sized donation is still unusual. A chair rarely shapes the course of a museum as much as its director; after all, the chair’s role is supposed to be non-executive.
In 2025, however, Apollo’s award for Personality of the Year goes to not one person but two – and one of them is the chair of the National Gallery. John Booth has held the post since 2021, an inauspicious year for museums around the world. Yet since he took over, the National has gone from strength to strength.
There are few UK institutions that will discuss their current situation cheerfully. Against a background of rising expenses, lower visitor figures and (in real terms) declining government support, it is not an easy time to work in museums. But London’s National Gallery is one place where people might be smiling. This is in no small part due to the success of its 200th anniversary celebrations, masterfully steered by the joint-recipient of the Personality of the Year award, the gallery’s director Gabriele Finaldi, the reopening of the Sainsbury Wing and the general triumph of the rehang of the permanent collection. But it is also due to the astonishing announcement – particularly so in this climate – that the gallery had secured the largest cash donation to a museum anywhere in the world. In fact, it managed to do so twice.
This sort of fundraising is now well within the purview of a museum chair. I remember being in the middle of a conversation at a Victoria and Albert Museum event with Nicholas Coleridge, then the V&A’s chair, when a member of the development office approached to take him to talk to a potential donor. It is all in a day’s work, when so much of that work is now about ensuring there’s enough money in the bank to keep the lights on.
Sometimes, however, a combination of personalities arrives at the top of an organisation that allows it to reach new heights. The last time I can think of this happening at a British cultural institution is when Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr – the two Nicks, as they became known – ran the National Theatre. They worked so well together that the NT enjoyed a rare moment of artistic success, public adoration and financial stability.
It seems like the partnership of Finaldi and Booth is heading in the same direction. Together they bring a dedication to the art and to good business: they are determined to rebuild the National Gallery into something that is set for the 21st century. The astonishingly bold attempt to build a gallery of modern and contemporary work that matches the quality of the Old Master collection might seem foolhardy to some. After this year, though, if anyone can pull it off it is these two. It is heartening to see a British museum dreaming big and then finding a way to make that dream a reality. But it is also testament to how museums function well when they have the right people in the right roles. Doing the everyday things well is what makes big things possible. That is something worth rewarding.
From the December 2025 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.