Charles Saumarez Smith left the top job at the National Gallery after just five years. Photograph: David Sillitoe
So who's going to get the top job at the National Gallery? Well, first of all one might ask who would want it. Charles Saumarez Smith left after only five years in the post -- no time at all for a job of that kind. Rumours about his departure abound: insider gossip suggests tension, power-struggles and personality clashes through all layers of the gallery's administration recently.
However, of the names that keep coming up, Gabriele Finaldi's consistently emerges as the favourite. He's currently number two at the Prado, he's about the right age (early 40s) and he's very well respected. On the other hand, his Prado job is great, he is allowed a fairly free rein and he gets on well with his director. Would he really want to leave all that?
Stephen Deuchar is ambitious and may be looking for a change from Tate Britain - he is running a high-profile and much-loved gallery, but as a director of any one of the Tate galleries, one is still always going to be under the shadow of the capo di capi, overall Tate director Nicholas Serota.
It would be very good news, in fact, if those appointing Saumarez Smith's successor looked beyond the list of usual suspects that people like me can come up with - beyond the legions of more-or-less interchangeable white Caucasian men in nice suits in their 40s. The headhunters will almost certainly cast their eyes abroad - there are plenty of good directors in the US -- but US museum directors tend to be paid a great deal more than their British counterparts. It's also worth noting that the National Maritime Museum directorship recently went to an Australian.
But surely there is homegrown talent to be sought out, too. When Neil MacGregor was appointed to be director of the National Gallery in 1987, he was a rank outsider -- a magazine editor who got the job almost by fluke (Margaret Thatcher, apparently, was dead set against having an American in the post, which was the trustees' favoured option). Yet he turned out to be one of the greatest arts leaders in the country and is now an utterly inspirational director of the British Museum. One gets the feeling that such a risk just wouldn't be contemplated now. Ironic, really, given that such a vast amount of money has recently been invested, in schemes such as the Clore Leadership Programme, specifically designed to train up British arts administrators to take on really big jobs. Since 2004, the only past Clore fellow to be given a really major international role is Axel Rüger, who went from being a curator at the National Gallery to the director of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam -- a huge leap for Rüger, which none the less shows every sign of working out well.
It would be great if the National Gallery could give us all a real surprise when it makes its appointment this autumn.
