Norman Rosenthal

Zucker emigrated to London first, in August 1939.

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

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

Norman Rosenthal was born in Cambridge on 8 November 1944, the son of Jewish refugees Paul Rosenthal (born 1904 in Nové Zámky, Slovakia) and Käthe Zucker (born 1907 in Mühlhausen, Thuringia, Germany).

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

Rosenthal's father, Paul Rosenthal, managed a Czech emigrants' club in Little Venice.

It was his mother particularly who nurtured his love of culture.

When he was nine she took him to see The Marriage of Figaro at Covent Garden.

Weekends were often spent walking from their home in north-west London to visit the National Gallery and Kenwood House in Hampstead.

Rosenthal was educated at Westminster City School, London.

From 1963 to 1966 he read History at the University of Leicester under Jack Simmons and W.G. Hoskins, author of The Making of the English Landscape.

In 1965, at the age of 19, 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.

After graduation he returned to London.

Seeking employment, he walked into Agnew & Sons Ltd, art dealers and print publishers on Bond Street, and enquired whether any positions were available.

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

Rosenthal remained with Agnew & Sons for three years, until 1968.

The following year, he won a German state studentship and left London to pursue a PhD at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the Free University of Berlin.

From 1970 to 1974 he was Exhibitions Officer at Brighton Museum and Art Gallery.

He was, however, 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.

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

In 1974 he became a curator at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, leaving in 1976.

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

During his two-year period at the Institute he organised two key exhibitions and made lasting working relationships, in particular with the Berlin-based art critic Christos M. Joachimides and German artist Joseph Beuys.

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

Art into Society took place as a part of a German Month of events that included lectures by critical theorists of the Frankfurt School of Philosophy.

Artists included Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, Klaus Staeck, Albrecht D, KP Brehmer KP Brehmer, Dieter Hacker and Gustav Metzger, whose work was to urge artists to strike for three years to "bring down the art system".

Apart from a brief visit to Ireland, Beuys remained present in the gallery for the majority of the exhibition: he engaged in conversations with the audience on how to achieve democracy, sketching out his ideas onto numerous chalkboards subsequently strewn across the floor.

The following year, in 1975, Rosenthal again worked with Joachimides on the exhibition Eight Artists, Eight Attitudes, Eight Greeks between 5 November and 4 December.

It coincided with a Greek Month to celebrate the fall of the Colonel's Dictatorship in Athens the previous year.

Artists, including Stephen Antonakos, Vlassis Caniaris Chryssa, Jannis Kounellis, Pavlos, Lucas Samaras, Takis and Costas Tsoclis, sought to "examine the facts of a spiritual as well as an actual immigration".

As Director of Exhibitions, Rosenthal famously was beaten up by Keith Allen and his anti-establishment friends.

To this day flecks of blood remain preserved beneath plexiglass on the ICA office wall.

Beneath it, a title reads: "This is Norman’s Blood."

The following year, in 1977, he joined the Royal Academy in London as Exhibitions Secretary where he remained until his resignation in 2008.

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

In it he criticised the organisation for its lack of driving philosophy.

Rosenthal has been a trustee of numerous different national and international cultural organisations since the 1980s; he is currently on the board of English National Ballet.

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 (Young British Artists).

In 2007, he was awarded a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Initially, his research subject was German peasant emancipation in the 18th century, but he soon changed his subject to art criticism of German Expressionism—for these subjects he was supervised by Francis Carsten and James Joll.