Stephen Parkinson (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay), Senior Vice-President

Stephen Parkinson (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport between 2021 and 2024, serving as Minister for Arts & Heritage. In that capacity, he ratified the 2003 UNESCO Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage, changed the law to extend the Blue Plaques scheme beyond London, and published guidance to help custodians of commemorative heritage assets. He was also the Minister responsible for the Platinum Jubilee, and then the Lying-in-State queue, for Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In Downing Street, as Political Secretary to Theresa May, he supported the campaign for a statue of Nancy Astor, the first woman to take her seat in the House of Commons, which was erected in Plymouth in November 2019; at DCMS, he supported the Byron Society's campaign to relocate the statue of Lord Byron which was cut off from Hyde Park by the creation of Park Lane in the late 1950s. Born in North Shields, Tyne & Wear, he read history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was President of the Cambridge Union in 2004, wrote a history of the society in 2009, and now serves as one of its trustees.

Sir Mark Jones FRSE

Mark Jones is Chair of the Pilgrim Trust, the National Trust for Scotland, the Grimsthorpe and Drummond Trust, the Sarikhani Art Foundation and the Patrick Allan-Fraser of Hospitalfield Trust, and owner of Golden Hare Books in Edinburgh. He is on the board of Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, the Ashmolean, and the Artists Rooms Foundation. He was Curator of Medals and then Keeper of Coins and Medals at the British Museum, Director of the National Museums of Scotland, Director of the V&A and Master of St Cross College.He is currently working on the life and work of William Wyon and a catalogue raisonée of the work of Algernon Newton.

Tim Knox FSA

Tim Knox was appointed Director of the Royal Collection by Queen Elizabeth II in 2018. He was the Director and Marlay Curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge 2013-18, and Director of Sir John Soane's Museum in London, 2005-13. Before that, he worked for the National Trust, from 1995 as its Architectural Historian and from 2002-05 as its Head Curator. He regularly lectures and writes on country houses, architecture, sculpture and the history of collecting. Publications include Sir John Soane's Museum London (2010), The British Ambassador's Residence Paris (2011), The Lost House Revisited (2017), with Ed Kluz and Olivia Horsfall-Turner, and The Rebirth of an English Country House: St Giles's House (2018), with the Earl of Shaftesbury.

Dr Jennifer Montagu, CBE, LVO, FBA

Jennifer Montagu spent most of her working life as Curator of the Photograph Collection of the Warburg Institute. She wrote her doctoral thesis on Charles Le Brun’s theory of expression, and worked on various aspects of French seventeenth-century art, before returning to her first love, sculpture, concentrating on baroque Italy, particularly Rome. She wrote a monograph, Alessandro Algardi, and more general books Roman Baroque Sculpture: the industry of art, and Gold, Silver and Bronze: Metal Sculpture of the Italian Baroque. She pursued this subject of silver both in her contribution to an exhibition of Roman silverwork in the Marche, and in her monograph Antonio Arrighi. A Silversmith and Bronze Founder in Baroque Rome. She is currently studying the eighteenth-century Roman sculptor Giovanni Battista Maini.

Dr Richard Pearce

Richard Pearce was born in UK of a Cornish family, and studied Biology before becoming a teacher. A career in international schools and research on the adjustment of internationally-mobile children led to an interest in cross-cultural psychology. He has written and contributed to professional training in the field, including the edited volume International Education and Schools (2013). He married Johanna Darke in 1967, and with their daughters witnessed at close quarters the foundation and flourishing of the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (PMSA). The inspiration of the committed team who built and continued this work continues to convince him of the importance of the PSSA’s mission.

Sir Nicholas Penny, FSA, FBA

After teaching art history at the University of Manchester, Nicholas Penny, was appointed Keeper of the Department of Western Art in the Ashmolean Museum and then Clore Curator of Renaissance art the National Gallery. In 2003 he took up the post of Senior Curator of Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art where he had previously been Mellon Professor. From 2008-15 he served as Director of the National Gallery. Since 2018 he has been visiting professor at the National Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou. His publications on sculpture include Church Monuments in Romantic England (1977); Taste and the Antique (together with the late Francis Haskell) (1981) and The Materials of Sculpture (1993). His three-volume catalogue of the Western European sculpture in the Ashmolean Museum was published in 1992. In addition, he has published extensively on painting, including three catalogues of the Italian paintings in the National Gallery (2004, 2008, 2016) and in the Norton Simon Museum (2020).

Sir Charles Saumarez Smith CBE

Charles Saumarez Smith worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1982-94. He was then Director of the National Portrait Gallery (1994-2002) and National Gallery (2002-07), before becoming Secretary and Chief Executive of the Royal Academy of Arts from 2007-18. Since 2018, he has been chairman of the Royal Drawing School, Professor of Architectural History at the Royal Academy, and an Honorary Professor in the School of History at Queen Mary University. He has written widely on the subject of museums, including a book on The National Gallery (2009) and The Art Museum in Modern Times (2021). He was awarded the CBE in 2008 and a Knighthood in 2018 for services to Art, Architecture and Culture.

Patricia Wengraf

Patricia Wengraf is a London-based art dealer who has specialised in old master sculpture and works of art since 1979. Her main area of interest lies in the field of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes on which she has published many essays and articles. Her exhibition catalogues European Bronzes from The Quentin Collection in 2004 and Renaissance & Baroque Bronzes from The Hill Collection in 2014 (both collections formed by Wengraf and shown at The Frick Collection, New York), set a new benchmark for such publications and for bronze scholarship.