Board of Directors

We are governed by a Board of Directors who bring a wide range of talents and experience to DACS. The Board includes artists, lawyers and other professionals with an interest in artists and their intellectual property. The Board ensures that DACS fulfils its mission to translate rights into revenue and recognition for visual artists. 

  • Neil Burgess

    Neil Burgess

    Neil has extensive experience in the photography sector in various roles as an agent, editor, collector and curator. He was Director of Magnum Photos for seven years and founded Magnum Photos’ first London office. He was Managing Editor of Network Photographers also for seven years and subsequently has run his own business NB Pictures since 2002. Early on in his career, he was also Director of the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool.

  • Julia Crabtree

    Julia Crabtree

    Julia Crabtree is a practising artist who has been collaborating with William Evans since 2006. They were recipients of the Nina Steward Artist Residency at South London Gallery, the Mary Hofstetter Legacy Scholarship for the New Materiality Residency at the Banff Centre Canada and are Wysing Art Centre residency alumni. They are currently working on a garden commission for Flat-Time House with writer Alice Hattrick. Solo exhibitions include Slip, Henry Moore Institute, Leed; Cell Project Space, London, South London Gallery and Legion TV, London. Recent commissions include Gulch, exhibited at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff and Crutch shown as part of Maximum Overdrive at Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea. Julia works as a lecturer at the University of Reading and the Royal College of Art.

  • Dónall Curtin

    Dónall Curtin

    Donall is an experienced accountant, board director and business leader with a background in Finance, Corporate Governance, Audit and Risk Management and extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. Board directorships include Green Effects Investments plc, Arts Council, European Movement Ireland, Office of Government Procurement, Health Insurance Authority, Chambers of Commerce Ireland, Visual Artists Ireland, Abbey Theatre, Glencree Centre for Peace & Reconciliation, Irish College Leuven. He is Founder of one of Ireland’s leading accountancy practices.

  • Oliver Evans

    Oliver Evans

    Oliver is Senior Director at Maureen Paley where he programmes and co-curates gallery exhibitions and events. He has worked, in a voluntary capacity, with the Gallery Climate Coalition since 2021 and examples of his writing and photography have been published in various catalogues and magazines. Oliver holds an MA in Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art.

  • Adham Faramawy

    Adham Faramawy

    Adham Faramawy works across media including moving image, sculptural installation, print, painting, and wall-based works engaging concerns with materiality, touch, and toxic embodiment to question ideas of the natural in relation to marginalised communities. Adham has screened and exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern and Tate Britain, Serpentine Gallery, and Somerset House, London. They are a lecturer in fine art at both Goldsmiths and Oxford Universities, was a trustee at New Contemporaries and is currently a member of the Royal Academy Schools Committee.

  • Jonathan Gosling

    Jonathan Gosling

    Jonathan manages (with help from DACS) the estate of painter Keith Vaughan. He is Emeritus Professor of Leadership at the University of Exeter, and is active in teaching, research and HE governance around the world. He has served on Boards of several charities, institutes and government agencies including the Fintry Trust and the Defence Academy.

  • Margaret Heffernan, Chair

    Margaret Heffernan, Chair

    Margaret is an entrepreneur, writer and collector. She has been Chief Executive of five companies and is currently Professor of Practice at University of Bath’s School of Management. Margaret has extensive Board experience in both the commercial and non-profit sectors and is also the author of 6 books and 5 plays.

  • Cedar Lewisohn

    Cedar Lewisohn

    Cedar Lewisohn is an artist, writer and currently works as a curator at The Southbank Centre, London, having held previous curatorial roles at The Museum of London, Hangar Biocca, Birmingham Museums, Northwestern (Qatar), Tate Britain and Tate Modern. Cedar has written for and edited numerous periodicals and is the author of Street Art (2008). Cedar holds a degree from the Camberwell College of Art and was a Researcher at The Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht.

  • Rut Blees Luxemburg

    Rut Blees Luxemburg

    Rut’s work as an artist and photographer concerns the representation of the city and the phenomenon of the urban. Her work ranges from large-scale photographic works, public art installations and operatic mis-en-scene. She has recently completed a major public artwork for the façade of Westminster City Hall: The Silver Forest. Rut is a Reader in Urban Aesthetics at the Royal College of Art and is founder and co-director of an experimental art production space, FILET. Photo credit: Rhianne Clarke

  • James Nadin

    James Nadin

    James is a barrister, specialising in commercial law. He has nearly 20 years’ experience of complex litigation and arbitration, across a broad range of industries (banking, telecoms, utilities, etc). He is a keen collector of contemporary art and photography, and recently founded a business to help promote prints and editions, particularly those raising funds for charities and institutions.

  • Gajinder Panesar

    Gajinder Panesar

    Gajinder has been into technology for nearly 40 years. He is currently Chief Architect at Optalysys, designing solutions for FHE using a combination of Digital electronics and Photonics. Previous to this he was a Fellow within Siemens EDA, having joined through the acquisition of UltraSoC where he served as Chief Technology Officer. He holds a BSc in Cybernetics and Computer Science and an MSc in Electronics System Design.

  • Janette Parris

    Janette Parris

    Janette Parris is a practising artist whose work uses narrative and humour to investigate the contemporary urban experience. She has exhibited nationally and interationally, including Tate Britain & Modern, I.C.A, The New Art Gallery Walsall, Kunsthaus Zürich and Hayward Gallery Touring.

  • Simon Patterson

    Simon Patterson

    Simon Patterson studied at Goldsmiths’ College in London and took part in the seminal ‘Freeze’ exhibition of 1988. In 1992 he made his best-known work to date, The Great Bear, a reworking of Harry Beck’s classic London Underground map. In 1993 he showed a pair of Last Suppers at the Aperto of the Venice Biennale, in which the disciples took the formations of football team, with Jesus Christ in goal. He was nominated for the Turner prize in 1996. He has made numerous permanent and temporary works and has exhibited at major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthaus Zurich; Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart, The Hayward Gallery, London; and Tate Britain, Liverpool and Modern.

  • Frederique Pierre-Pierre

    Frederique Pierre-Pierre

    Frederique holds a Master Law Degree from the University of Sorbonne and a LLM from King’s College London. Frederique practiced as a lawyer before joining the financial sector in which she has extensive experience both in investment banking and asset management. Her last executive role was Chief Operating Officer for the CIO office of Deutsche Bank Asset Management. Her Trustee and Non-Executive Director experience includes Matt’s Gallery and the Henry Moore Foundation. Photo credit: Suki Dhanda