24 Facts About Norman Rosenthal

Sir Norman Rosenthal was born on 8 November 1944 and is a British independent curator and art historian.

Norman Rosenthal is well known for his support of contemporary art, and is particularly associated with the German artists Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Anselm Kiefer and Julian Schnabel, the Italian painter Francesco Clemente, and the generation of British artists that came to prominence in the early 1990s known as the YBAs.

Paul Norman Rosenthal came with the Free Czech Army two years later in 1941.

The couple moved from Cambridge to North West London after their first son, Norman Rosenthal, was born in 1944.

In 1965, at the age of 19, Norman Rosenthal organised his first exhibition, Artists in Cornwall, at the Leicester Museum and Art Gallery as part of the University of Leicester's University Arts Festival.

Norman Rosenthal was given the job of researcher and librarian on the spot, beginning work immediately.

Norman Rosenthal was not to finish his thesis: in 1970 a vacancy came up in the UK for Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, which at the time was under the directorship of John Morley.

Norman Rosenthal remained in the post for four years and learnt a great deal from Morley.

In 1974, Norman Rosenthal was appointed a Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.

Between 30 October and 24 November 1974 Norman Rosenthal organised an exhibition with Joachimides of new radical German art called Art into Society; Society into Art: Seven German Artists.

In 1977, The Spectator published a short polemical article Norman Rosenthal wrote called "The Future of the RA".

Partly as a result of this article Norman Rosenthal was eventually offered a job as Exhibitions Secretary by then President Hugh Casson.

In 1997, Norman Rosenthal co-curated the very controversial exhibition Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection with Charles Saatchi.

Many felt their work had been ignored by the Exhibitions Secretary, and was only displayed in the annual Summer Exhibition with which Norman Rosenthal played no part.

The inclusion of Myra, Marcus Harvey's contentious portrait of Myra Hindley, in the Sensation exhibition and Norman Rosenthal himself were other reasons cited.

In 2004, Norman Rosenthal was nearly sacked by Lawton Fitt, an ex-Goldmann Sachs banker who took the role of the Royal Academy's Secretary.

In 2008, Norman Rosenthal finally resigned from his post at the Royal Academy.

Norman Rosenthal stayed a further two years in an advisory role, curating an exhibition of Cranach in 2008 and Anish Kapoor in 2009.

In June 2011, Julian Schnabel, curated by Norman Rosenthal, opened at Venice Museo Correr.

Norman Rosenthal is an advisor to the Leiden Gallery in New York, a major private collection of 17th-century Dutch Leiden School paintings centred on Rembrandt.

In September 2020, Norman Rosenthal became chairman of the CIRCA Approval Council, an art platform based in London's Piccadilly Circus.

In 1989, Norman Rosenthal married Manuela Mena Marques, former Deputy Director of the Prado, Madrid, and former Senior Curator of Eighteenth-Century Painting and Goya.

Norman Rosenthal was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art, London in 1987, received a Hon.

Norman Rosenthal made cameo appearances in the British film director Derek Jarman's Sebastiane and Caravaggio.