Norman Rosenthal

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Sir Norman Rosenthal
Rosenthal in 2012
Born1944 (age 79–80)
London, England
OccupationArt curator

Sir Norman Rosenthal (born 8 November 1944) is a British independent curator and art historian. From 1970 to 1974 he was Exhibitions Officer at

knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.[2] Rosenthal is well known for his support of contemporary art, and is particularly associated with the German artists Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Julian Schnabel, the Italian painter Francesco Clemente, and the generation of British artists that came to prominence in the early 1990s known as the YBAs
(Young British Artists).

Early life and education

Norman Rosenthal was born in Cambridge on 8 November 1944, the son of Jewish refugees Paul Rosenthal (born 1904 in Nové Zámky, Slovakia) and Käthe Zucker (born 1907 in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, Germany). Zucker emigrated to London first, in August 1939. Paul Rosenthal came with the Free Czech Army two years later in 1941. The couple moved from Cambridge to North West London after their first son, Norman, was born in 1944. Rosenthal's father, Paul Rosenthal, managed a Czech emigrants' club in Little Venice. It was his mother particularly who nurtured his love of culture. When he was nine she took him to see The Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden. Weekends were often spent walking from their home in north-west London to visit the National Gallery and Kenwood House in Hampstead.

Rosenthal was educated at

Leicester Museum and Art Gallery
as part of the University of Leicester's University Arts Festival.

After graduation he returned to London. Seeking employment, he walked into Agnew & Sons Ltd, art dealers and print publishers on

Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, which at the time was under the directorship of John Morley.[5]
Rosenthal remained in the post for four years and learnt a great deal from Morley.

ICA, London

In 1974, Rosenthal was appointed a Curator at the

KP Brehmer, Dieter Hacker and Gustav Metzger
, whose work was to urge artists to strike for three years to "bring down the art system". Apart from a brief visit to Ireland, Beuys remained present in the gallery for the majority of the exhibition: he engaged in conversations with the audience on how to achieve democracy, sketching out his ideas onto numerous chalkboards subsequently strewn across the floor.

The following year, in 1975, Rosenthal again worked with Joachimides on the exhibition Eight Artists, Eight Attitudes, Eight Greeks between 5 November and 4 December. It coincided with a Greek Month to celebrate the fall of the Colonel's Dictatorship in Athens the previous year. Artists, including Stephen Antonakos, Vlassis Caniaris Chryssa, Jannis Kounellis, Pavlos, Lucas Samaras, Takis and Costas Tsoclis, sought to "examine the facts of a spiritual as well as an actual immigration".[8]

As Director of Exhibitions, Rosenthal famously was beaten up by Keith Allen and his anti-establishment friends. To this day flecks of blood remain preserved beneath plexiglass on the ICA office wall. Beneath it, a title reads: "This is Norman’s Blood."[9]

Royal Academy, London

In 1977, The Spectator published a short polemical article Rosenthal wrote called "The Future of the RA". In it he criticised the organisation for its lack of driving philosophy. It had fantastic galleries, but lacked money and vision.[10] Partly as a result of this article Rosenthal was eventually offered a job as Exhibitions Secretary by then President Hugh Casson.

Rosenthal's first exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1978, at the suggestion of

Bundeskunsthalle
, Bonn in 2005-6.

Rosenthal was notoriously unpopular with Royal Academicians. Many felt their work had been ignored by the Exhibitions Secretary, and was only displayed in the annual Summer Exhibition with which Rosenthal played no part." I want the best exhibitions. That's that," Rosenthal told

Myra Hindley, in the Sensation exhibition and Rosenthal himself were other reasons cited. In 2004, Rosenthal was nearly sacked by Lawton Fitt, an ex-Goldmann Sachs banker who took the role of the Royal Academy's Secretary. "Fitt and two others sent me a fax saying my services were no longer required and I should find a solicitor," Rosenthal has said. "I did: Cherie Blair. My biggest regret is not having seen their faces when they received her letter."[11]

In 2008, Rosenthal finally resigned from his post at the Royal Academy. It is disputed whether or not he was pushed or left of his own accord. He stayed a further two years in an advisory role, curating an exhibition of Cranach in 2008 and Anish Kapoor in 2009. Writing in The Guardian, art critic Jonathan Jones commented that "The Royal Academy will be an infinitely poorer place without Sir Norman Rosenthal." “He turned a place whose membership and traditions give it a massive leaning towards the conservative into a world-class, influential venue for exhibitions of contemporary art."[12]

Life after the Royal Academy

Since his resignation from the Royal Academy Rosenthal has continued to curate exhibitions and write on established and emerging contemporary artists. In June 2011, Julian Schnabel, curated by Rosenthal, opened at Venice Museo Correr. In 2012, he curated an exhibition of recent Baselitz paintings for Villa Schöningen in Berlin and also contributed a long career retrospective essay for White Cube Gallery on the painter George Baselitz. The same year he wrote on the painter Raqib Shaw for Ropac Gallery in Paris and on Joseph Beuys for the exhibition Stag Monuments also for Ropac Gallery, Paris. He is an advisor to the Leiden Gallery in New York, a major private collection of 17th-century Dutch Leiden School paintings centred on Rembrandt. He is currently working with New York-based curator Alex Gartenfeld on the exhibition Empire State, a survey of New York art today, which will run at the Palaexpo, Rome from April – September 2013. In May 2013, a major solo exhibition of Anish Kapoor curated by Rosenthal will open at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin. In September 2020, Rosenthal became chairman of the

billboards in London, Tokyo and Seoul.[15]

Personal life

In 1989, Rosenthal married

Prado
, Madrid, and former Senior Curator of Eighteenth-Century Painting and Goya. Together they have two daughters.

Boards

Throughout his career Rosenthal has been a member of numerous boards, these include member: Opera Board, Royal Opera House, 1994–98; board, Palazzo Grassi, Venice, 1986– 2004; Comité Scientifique, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 2000–05; Trustee, Thyssen Bornemisza Foundation, 2002–2012 (Rosenthal publicly resigned in protest at Baroness Thyssen Bornemisza's sale of Constable's The Lock[citation needed]); Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2004–06; and currently English National Ballet, 2012 – ongoing.

Awards

Throughout his career Rosenthal has received numerous awards in recognition of his services to art and culture, including the Chevalier in 1987; the

Leicester University in 2006. In 2007 he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List
.

Cameos

Rosenthal made cameo appearances in the British film director

's Back to Fucking Cambridge.

List of major exhibitions that took place under Rosenthal at the Royal Academy

References

  1. ^ Hodgson, Martin (31 January 2008). "Rosenthal quits Royal Academy after 31 years of blockbusters". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  2. ^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 August 2011. Retrieved 7 April 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. ^ "OWCA - Welcome to the Old Westminster Citizens' Association". owca.org.uk. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  4. ^ "Sir Norman Rosenthal Authorised Biography - Debrett's People of Today". debretts.com. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  5. ^ "John Morley". Telegraph.co.uk. 19 May 2001. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  6. ^ "Art into Society - Society into Art : Seven German Artists". Specific Object. 24 November 1974. Retrieved 18 August 2016.
  7. . Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  8. . Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  9. ^ "The Will Gompertz Fringe". ica.org.uk. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  10. ^ Lister, David (6 October 1997). "Visual arts: What Norman really means to the RA". The Independent. Archived from the original on 21 June 2022. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  11. ^ a b "Why I am leaving the Royal Academy". The Evening Standard. 5 April 2012. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  12. ^ Jones, Jonathan (31 January 2008). "Without Rosenthal the RA is doomed". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
  13. ^ Association, Press “Ai Weiwei video installation played at Piccadilly Circus”, Southern Daily Echo, 1 October 2020. Retrieved 30 July 2021
  14. ^ Buck, Louisa “New public art project in London will show works by Ai Weiwei and Eddie Peake on Europe's largest billboard”, The Art Newspaper, 24 September 2020. Retrieved 29 July 2021
  15. ^ Margolies, Jane (29 April 2021), “New David Hockney Billboards to Brighten 5 Cities in May”, The New York Times. Retrieved 29 July 2021.