The Master

Duncan Robinson

Mr Robinson was educated at King Edward VI School Macclesfield and at Clare College, where he read English. He is one of the leading authorities on British art from the eighteenth century onwards - a revised version of his influential study of Stanley Spencer (1891-1959), first published in 1979 is still in print.

His training in art history began with a Mellon Fellowship at Yale in 1965, and his academic career ever since has straddled the Atlantic and been divided between Cambridge and Yale. In 1967 he returned to Cambridge to study the Sienese Trecento painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti under the supervision of Sir John Pope-Hennessy. Two years later, he was appointed Assistant Keeper of Paintings and Drawings at the Fitzwilliam Museum, and became Keeper in 1976. He became a Fellow and College Lecturer at Clare in 1975, and directed studies for five other Colleges until he left Cambridge in 1981.

From 1981 until 1995 Mr Robinson served as Director of the Yale Centre for British Art and, simultaneously, as CEO of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London. He was an adjunct Professor of the History of Art at Yale, where he continued to teach. In 1995 he returned to Cambridge to become the Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum and a Professorial Fellow of Clare College. In 2002 he was appointed as the Master of Magdalene and in 2005 as a Deputy Vice-Chancellor. He is a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of the County of Cambridgeshire, Chairman of the Henry Moore Foundation and the Prince's Drawing School, and Trustee of a number of organizations including the Royal Collection.

The Master retired from the directorship of the Fitzwilliam in December 2007. He did so to devote more time to Magdalene, to his research and his teaching. He believes fervently in the collegiate system as the foundation of much that is distinctive and best about Cambridge, and he is an incurable teacher of both undergraduate and graduate students. It is rare for a head of house to direct studies in his own subject; Mr Robinson takes great pride and pleasure in doing so for both of his Colleges: Clare and Magdalene.

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