The director of the National Gallery in London, Gabriele Finaldi, has received a knighthood in the King’s UK New Years Honours list for 2025 while the Scottish artist Barbara Davis Rae has been made a Dame.
Finaldi says in a statement: "I am profoundly humbled by this honour and would like to express my gratitude for the recognition accorded to me and the whole National Gallery staff’s commitment to public service, especially in the Bicentenary year of the institution’s founding.”
In an interview earlier this year, Finaldi discussed plans to reopen the gallery’s Sainsbury Wing next May as part of the gallery’s bicentenary project, rehang the collection and consider work on a further extension.
Davis Rae is “an artist whose work has been inspired by history, geography and geology often using landscape as a starting point”, says a statement from the UK Cabinet office. “The work has taken her to Arizona, Europe and recently four trips to the Arctic, exploring the NorthWest Passage in the footsteps of [John] Franklin. The most recent journey was to the Antarctic to explore the story of [Ernest] Shackleton.”
Tom Dixon, the former creative director of Habitat, gets a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) along with Rebecca Salter, the first woman to be elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2019. Roger Farrant Bland, the former Keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory at the British Museum, was also awarded CBE.
Rose Aidin, the founder and chief executive of Art History Link-Up (AHLU), a charity which provides free art history top-up courses for students at state-run schools in the UK, was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire).
Other MBE recipients include the Barnsley-born sculptor Graham Ibbeson, known for his statue of the late comedian Eric Morecambe which stands in the town of Morecambe; Jane Lawson who was appointed Director of Development of the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2005; Edwina Sassoon who established an art consultancy in 1990; Kim Streets, the chief executive of Sheffield Museums and Katherine Wood, the founding director of the Colchester art gallery, Firstsite.
Tony Butler, the executive director of Derby Museums Trust since January 2014, was awarded OBE (Officer of the order of the British Empire).
Rose Aidin, chief executive of Art History Link-Up
Photo: Rebecca Reid