Peter Funnell
Curator, Nineteenth-Century Portraits and Head of Research Programmes
National Portrait Gallery
About:
Peter Funnell is Curator of Nineteenth-Century Portraits and Head of Research Programmes at the National Portrait Gallery, London. He studied at University College London and took a doctorate in the history of art at Oxford University. A year-long fellowship at Yale University led to his working and living in the United States in the mid 1980s. Since joining the National Portrait Gallery in 1990 he has curated many exhibitions and led major projects ranging from the redevelopment of the Gallery’s first-floor displays to directing the research of 10,000 portrait illustrations for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography of which he is a Consultant Editor. He currently combines his curatorial responsibilities with co-ordinating and promoting research at the Gallery. He specialises in nineteenth-century portraiture across all media and has also published and lectured on British art theory and the London art world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the representation of masculinity in British portraiture, and the history of museum display.