The artists Gillian Wearing, Sonia Boyce, Tacita Dean, Alison Wilding and Yinka Shonibare have all been recognised in the Queen’s New Year honours list for 2019.
Boyce, already an MBE, was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) along with Wilding. Gillian Wearing (previously OBE), Yinka Shonibare (MBE), and Tacita Dean (OBE) all received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire).
Wearing unveiled her statue of the Suffragist Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square, London, in April. Meanwhile, Boyce is working with local communities to produce a mural for the 1.8-kilometre wall running through Custom House, Silvertown and North Woolwich in London’s East End as part of the Crossrail transport project.
The full scope of Dean’s work was revealed in three collaborative exhibitions earlier this year at the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts. Still Water by Alison Wilding, a DCMS-sponsored memorial to UK citizens affected by terrorism overseas, was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire in May.
Tacita Dean CBE Jim Rakete
The museum sector was garlanded also. Ian Blatchford, the director of the Science Museum group which oversees the Science Museum in London, has been knighted “for services to cultural education”. Samuel Mullins, the director of the Transport Museum in London, received an OBE along with Caroline Collier, the director of partnerships and programmes at Tate, and Andrew Nairne, the director of Kettle’s Yard gallery at the University of Cambridge. Nairne says: "I am delighted to receive this recognition following the successful reopening of Kettle’s Yard in 2018: a great team effort over many years."
Ann Dumas, a curator at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, and Andrea Nixon, the former executive director of Tate Liverpool, both received an MBE (member of the Order of the British Empire).
Other arts and culture figures honoured include the architect John Pawson, who received a CBE, and the historian David Olusoga (OBE), co-presenter of the BBC’s Civilisations series.
Andrew Nairne, the director of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, received an OBE courtesy Andrew Nairne