Gabriele Finaldi — the Director of the National Gallery in London — has been knighted by HM The King in the New Year Honours list for 2025.
Dr Finaldi gets his knighthood for services to arts and culture. He's led the National Gallery since August 2015, but also served as a curator there for a decade from 1992. Prior to his directorship in London, Finaldi served as Deputy Director for Collections and Research at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid from 2002 to 2015.
In a statement Finaldi said he was "profoundly humbled by this honour." He added he expressed his "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 2024 the National Gallery celebrated its 200th anniversary with a year-long festival that featured a blockbuster Van Gogh exhibition that critics loved. The birthday bash will culminate in May 2025 with a full rehang of the permanent collection, and a revamped Sainsbury's Wing entrance.
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Derby Museums' Tony Butler gets OBE
The New Year's Honours also awarded an OBE to Tony Butler, the executive director of Derby Museums Trust.
He's led the Trust since 2013, overseeing their three museums — Derby Museum and Art Gallery, the Museum of Making and Pickford’s House. In 2021 the trust opened the Museum of Making at Derby Silk Mill following an £18 million redevelopment. It resulted in its nomination for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2022.
Butler said "I’m hugely thrilled, but you’re only as good as the people you work with and I have worked with amazing people over the years." He added that "Derby Museums is for the thinker and maker in all of us, and in the years to come we’ll continue to inspire the next generation to see themselves as creative beings.”
There was also a CBE for Rebecca Salter, the first woman to be elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2019, and MBEs for sculptor Graham Ibbeson, known for his statue of the late comedian Eric Morecambe which stands in the town of Morecambe, and Jane Lawson, the Director of Development of the Victoria and Albert Museum since 2005.