Dr Stephen Deuchar BA History

Director of the Art Fund

This fascination with middle eastern culture stems directly from some courses on the Crusades which I took while at Southampton, so I owe the University a big debt of gratitude for awakening that in me.

Dr Stephen Deuchar is Director of the Art Fund, the national fundraising charity for works of art. Previously, he headed Tate Britain, the London gallery which houses one of the world’s leading collections of British art from 1500 to the present day.

Although he went on to a career in the arts, he found his History studies at Southampton inspirational. “One of the things that has featured large in my life over the past 10 years has been making regular and quite challenging trips with my wife and four children to various countries in the Middle East – Syria, Iran and Yemen for example – and North Africa.

“This fascination with middle eastern culture stems directly from some courses on the Crusades which I took while at Southampton, so I owe the University a big debt of gratitude for awakening that in me.”

After graduating from Southampton, (and spending nine months travelling around the world in a camper van with a fellow History graduate), Stephen continued his studies at the University of London where he gained a PhD in Art History. His career as a curator began when he joined the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. There, he led a £20m project to re-develop the museum’s main complex before joining Tate Britain.