Four trustees appointed to the Victoria and Albert Museum Board
The Prime Minister has appointed four new trustees to the board of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Genevieve Davies, Jonathan Anderson and Marc St John have been appointed for four years from 4 February 2019, David Bomford has been appointed for four years from 1 April 2019.
Genevieve Davies
Dr Genevieve Davies read French and Spanish at Bristol University. She went on to take her MPhil, followed by her DPhil in Psychoanalysis and Existentialism, at St John’s College Oxford. Her thesis has since been published as part of Peter Lang’s Modern French Identities series. Following the CPE in Law at City University she was awarded the Inner Temple Princess Royal Scholarship and the Major Scholarship and was called to the Bar in 2000. Her interests include ballet, having trained until the age of 16, historical architecture and conservation. She is a member of The Society of Jewellery Historians and a Founder of Opera Holland Park.
Dr Davies has sat on the Board of the Royal Opera House since 2013, where she has also served on the Open Up Advisory Committee. She is on the Board of the V&A Foundation, the Board of British Youth Opera and is also a Governor of the Royal Ballet School.
Jonathan Anderson
Jonathan Anderson is one of the leading fashion designers of his generation, earning both critical acclaim and commercial success with the collections he designs for his eponymous label, JW Anderson, and as creative director of the LVMH-owned Spanish luxury house LOEWE. He attended the London College of Fashion and launched his own menswear collection in 2008, under the JW Anderson label. In 2010, he expanded into womenswear and in 2013 was named the creative director of Loewe. Two years later, in 2015, he became the first fashion designer to be awarded both Men’s and Womenswear Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council. Over the course of his career, Anderson has also collaborated on collections and products for brands including Converse, Coca-Cola, Topshop and Uniqlo among others.
In 2017 Anderson curated Disobedient Bodies, an exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield in London featuring a personal selection of sculptures, alongside notable fashion pieces and objects of craft and design. The exhibition investigated the way the human form has been reconceived by artists and designers across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and encapsulated the intersection of Anderson’s major passions: art and fashion.
Marc St John
Marc is a former partner and head of investor relations at CVC Capital Partners (1999 to 2018). He also worked for Citicorp in New York, Paris and London (1985-98) and The Colorado Springs School, Colorado (1980-82). He serves or has served as chair of the board at Power2 (a leading youth charity), London (2013-present); St Antony’s College Financial Advisory Committee, Oxford (2009-present); on the Corporate Advisory Group to the British Academy (2018-present); the European Venture Capital Association, Brussels (2002-08); and the American University of Paris, Paris (2000-2005). Marc has dual USA/UK citizenship, is married to Dr Julie Newton, a Visiting Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford University and holds a Masters in International Relations from Columbia University and a BA from Colorado College.
David Bomford
After studying chemistry at the University of Sussex, David Bomford went to the National Gallery, London, where he became Senior Restorer of paintings; during nearly four decades there he worked on many important paintings and organised an award-winning series of exhibitions and catalogues on the techniques of European painters, including early Italian artists, Rembrandt and the Impressionists. In 2007, he went to the J Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, as Director of Collections and then as acting Director of the museum. In 2012, he moved to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as Chair of Conservation and Head of European Art. While in Houston, he was in charge of the design and construction of a new state-of-the-art conservation building and curated exhibitions on subjects including Rubens, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, Spanish Colonial painting, the Habsburgs and the British monarchy.
David has been the Secretary-General of the International Institute for Conservation; editor of the international journal Studies in Conservation; Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford; and has had visiting professorships in conservation and art history in Mexico City, in Sao Paolo, and at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery, Washington. He has many academic interests, including the study of unfinished art.
These roles are not remunerated. These appointments have been made in accordance with the Cabinet Office’s Governance Code on Public Appointments. The process is regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments. The Government’s Governance Code requires that any significant political activity undertaken by an appointee in the last five years is declared. This is defined as including holding office, public speaking, making a recordable donation or candidature for election. Genevieve, Jonathan, Marc and David have made no such declarations.