ART NEWS
Christopher le Brun and Stephen Deuchar Have Been Knighted
The Queen’s New Year UK Honors list for 2021 has been released, revealing which British individuals have been honored for their services to the arts.
Stephen Deuchar, former director of Tate Britain who served at the helm of the UK’s Art Fund for ten years, has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Deuchar stepped down from his position at the Art Fund this March, following his tenure as Tate Britain’s first director from 1998 to 2010. His time at the charity was fruitful; under his direction the organization doubled its membership, allocated more than $50 million to UK museums for the acquisition of artworks, and commissioned new contemporary artworks including Rachel Whiteread’s Tree of Life for the Whitechapel Gallery and Katrina Palmer’s Coffin Jump at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Christopher le Brun, who stepped down as president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London last year, was also made a knight. Le Brun, a trained painter and printmaker, was elected to the Royal Academy in 1996, where he became its first-ever Professor of Drawing.
Additionally, artist Michael Landy, who is best known for his 2000 performance piece Break Down, in which he catalogued and then destroyed all his material possessions, received a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). The title is awarded for outstanding achievement in the individual’s field.
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Philip Archer, former principal of Leith School of Art in Edinburgh was made an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire), as well as Lesley Fitton, keeper of the department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum in London, and potter Jennifer Lee who was recognized for her “services to ceramics.” Lee was awarded the Loewe Craft Prize in 2018 and her work is held in the collections of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
MBEs (Member of the Order of the British Empire), a lower-ranking Order of the British Empire award, was given to the sculptor Halima Cassell and Jonty Claypole and artist Denzil Forrester, whose mural Brixton Blue was installed in London’s Brixton underground station last year.
