The director of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, Tristram Hunt, has received a knighthood in the King’s UK New Years Honours list for 2026. Hunt, who has been in post since 2017, is honoured for “services to museums”; the “intellectual and cultural historian” (his own description posted on LinkedIn) is vocal on issues such as implementing a tourist levy to help support the UK’s cultural infrastructure. Earlier this year, he oversaw the opening of the V&A East Storehouse in Stratford.
The curator Ekow Eshun, the former director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, bags an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire). The art historian Marcia Pointon, professor emerita in the history of art at the University of Manchester, was also awarded an OBE. The Edinburgh-based cultural heritage expert Janet Blake and Jo Quinton-Tulloch, the director of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, were also awarded OBEs.
Susan Bowers, director of the Pilgrim Trust which focuses on preserving the UK’s heritage, was made an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire). Hilary McGrady, the director-general of the National Trust, was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). In 2020 McGrady commissioned a controversial report on the trust’s links to slavery and colonialism. The awards are handed out twice a year—at New Year and then again in June on the monarch’s official birthday.
Hilary McGrady CBE
National Trust Images/James Dobson
