Stephen Deuchar

Dr Stephen Deuchar joined the Art Fund in January 2010 having previously served as the founding Director of Tate Britain from 1998 to December 2009.

In his first months, Stephen Deuchar oversaw the successful £3.3 million campaign to buy the Staffordshire Hoard – the largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever found – and a series of major acquisitions across all periods and media has followed, including the largest ever Art Fund grant for a single work of art - £2M towards Titian's Diana and Callisto, bought jointly by the National Gallery and National Galleries Scotland. Stephen has overseen in parallel the Art Fund's renewed commitment to contemporary art: for example in June 2012 Rachel Whiteread's first permanent UK public work, Tree of Life for the façade of the Whitechapel Gallery, was commissioned with our support.

He continues to lead and develop the Art Fund’s programme, which currently includes the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year; the UK tour of Artist Rooms; the regional collecting initiative Art Fund International; a curatorial grant programme; and Renew, a collecting scheme which will help museums replenish and develop their existing holdings. This expanding programme of grant-giving has been underpinned by the launch of the National Art Pass in 2011, which brought a 20% increase in Art Fund membership in its first year alone.

During his time at Tate, Stephen worked closely with the Art Fund on a number of fundraising fronts, including the campaign to secure Rubens’s Sketch for the Banqueting House Ceiling, towards which the Art Fund contributed £600,000. He also took a central role in the Art Fund’s successful campaign to acquire Turner’s Blue Rigi for Tate Britain in 2007.

Prior to working at Tate he spent 12 years as a curator and exhibitions director at the National Maritime Museum. Educated at the universities of Southampton, London and Yale, Stephen has a strong interest in contemporary art and is a specialist in 18th-century British art.

His publications include Sporting art in eighteenth-century England: a social and political history (Yale University Press, 1988). Stephen Deuchar was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, 2010.