Not just a job for the boys ... Norman Rosenthal (right) and curator Albert Kostenevich at the Royal Academy in January 2008. Photograph: Sarah Lee
At last another woman has got a powerful job in the arts: Kathleen Soriano, for the past three years director of Compton Verney in Warwickshire - a gem of an art gallery in a Robert Adam country house - is to become director of exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. That's essentially Norman Rosenthal's old job but with a slightly different title. And boy, he'll be a tough act to follow.
Still, there's no reason to suppose Soriano won't be up to it. I visited Compton Verney on Tuesday and, while clearly it's not an organisation on the same scale as the RA, it was incredibly busy on a non-school holidays weekday. The current exhibition, the Fabric of Myth is fascinating. (Particularly to a classicist like me - I particularly loved a 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Ovid's Metamorphoses showing Arachne changing into a spider - the six legged creature emerging rather gruesomely from the neck of the girl's gown.) And, perhaps most important of all, the place has a terrific feel to it - in a way that's hard to articulate. It just seems to know what it's there for, and gets on with it with grace. (I can't resist, however, revealing that Compton Verney's nickname in the trade is Royston Vasey.)
Soriano will doubtless work in an entirely different way from Rosenthal. There's only one Norman, after all: he was a deadline surfer and a dramatist, and brilliant at what he did. The challenge will be to hit the Norman-style highs while avoiding the lows and the rows. Good luck to her.
