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Our Staff
Ann Sumner,
Director
Barber Professor of Fine Art and Curatorial Practice
Ann Sumner read History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London and undertook her PhD at Newnham College, Cambridge. She began her career at the National Portrait Gallery, London and has held curatorial positions at the Holburne Museum, University of Bath, Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Harewood House Trust and the National Museum of Wales, where she was Head of Fine Art for seven years prior to her appointment as Director of the Barber Institute. Her specialist areas of interest are 17th-century British portraiture and miniature painting, 18th-century British portraiture and landscape painting and French 19th-century painting, as well as the art of Wales. She has published work on the Welsh landscape painter Thomas Jones, curating and co-authoring the 2003 bi-centenary catalogue Thomas Jones: An Artist Rediscovered (Yale University Press) as well as researching the Impressionist paintings at Cardiff publishing Colour and Light: 50 Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Works in the National Museum of Wales (2004). She is currently researching and writing catalogues for the exhibition Reunited: Gwen John, Mère Poussepin and the Catholic Church exhibition, which opens at the Barber in July 2008, and Sisley in England and Wales (curated jointly with Christopher Riopelle), which opens at the National Gallery, London in November 2008. Professor Sumner is a member of the NICE (National Inventory of Continental European) Paintings Steering Committee at the National Gallery, London, a Trustee of the Methodist Art Collection of Modern Art and a member of the selection panel for the National Photographic Portrait Commission at the National Museum of Wales.
Paul Spencer-Longhurst MA (Oxon), MA (Lond), PhD (Birm)
Senior Curator
Paul Spencer -Longhurst read Modern History at Christ Church, Oxford and took a Diploma with Merit at the Study Centre for the History of the Fine and Decorative Arts at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He gained an MA in Romantic Art (1750–1850) at the Courtauld Institute before taking up his first professional appointment in 1977 at the National Gallery, London as Official Lecturer in the Education Department. From 1991 to 1997 he was Curator and Lecturer in Fine Art at the Barber Institute and since 1997 has held the joint positions of Senior Curator at the Barber Institute and Senior Lecturer in the Department of History of Art, University of Birmingham, where he achieved his PhD in 2001. He has published widely on French Neo-classical and Romantic art, British painting of the late 18th and 19th centuries and the history of collecting and patronage. He has curated a number of major exhibitions in Britain and the USA, featuring the works of Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, Rossetti, Puvis de Chavannes, JC Dahl and other artists. He was co-curator of Behind Closed Doors: Birmingham Private Collections from Van Dyck to Cornelia Parker (Barber Institute, 2008) and is currently working on Northern Light: Swedish Landscapes from the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, to be held at the Barber Institute from February 2009. Dr Spencer-Longhurst has been a Visiting Fellow at Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, an Expert Adviser to the Acceptance in Lieu Panel and is a Trustee of the Public Picture Gallery Fund and the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.
Eurydice Georganteli, MA, PhD, FSA
Curator of Coins
Eurydice Georganteli read Archaeology and History of Art at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the University of Oxford. She has been a Bodossakis and A.G. Leventis scholar at Oxford, post-doctoral fellow at Dumbarton Oaks (Trustees for Harvard University), Washington DC, Robinson scholar at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and fellow of the Clore Leadership programme of April 2008. She has worked at the British Museum and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, and taught at the Institute for Balkan Studies and the University of Thessaly, Greece, before becoming the Curator of Coins at the Barber Institute and Lecturer in Numismatics and Economic History at the University of Birmingham in 2000. Her work during the past eight years has focused on the development of the Barber collections through the creation of a new coin gallery, library and study room, of the graduate programme in Numismatics at the University, and four major exhibitions. She contributes to the MBA programme of the University’s Business School, and is a visiting lecturer at Queen’s University, Belfast. Her recent publication Encounters: Travel and Money in the Byzantine World (London 2006) was the recipient of the Royal Numismatic Society Lhotka Memorial Prize 2007 and runner-up in the Art Newspaper/AXA Art Exhibition Publication Prize 2007. Eurydice is member of the Royal Numismatic Society, and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Brian Scholes
Education Officer
Brian Scholes was born in Manchester in 1963 and grew up in nearby Oldham, attending Royton & Crompton Comprehensive School. Between 1982 and 1985, Brian studied Creative Arts at Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic, where he obtained a 2:1 honours degree, specializing in drawing and painting. He went on to complete a PGCE at Manchester Polytechnic in 1986, and then became an art teacher at Abraham Moss High School in Crumpsall, Manchester, where he taught for nine years. In 1995 Brian became a volunteer with VSO and worked with disabled war veterans in Eritrea, where he was responsible for setting up the country’s first art and design course. On his return to Britain after a year in East Africa, and a stint working as a supply teacher, Brian enrolled on the Master’s degree course in Heritage Studies at Salford University in 1998. On completion in 1998, Brian took up the post of Education Officer at the Barber, where he has been for the last nine years. Brian is interested in all aspects of art, particularly 17th-century European art and Impressionism.