About >
Erin Bell joined as a Trustee in October 2018. Erin is a consultant and an executive coach with a particular focus on the arts. Prior to this she worked for over twenty-five years in global financial services (investment management), at The Capital Group, concentrating on investment and development, and before then, in comics and fashion. Erin has been involved with The Whitechapel Gallery in a variety of areas – The Commissioning Council, Art Icon Committee, as well as being a co-sponsor of the Summer Boot Camps. She is also a member of the Council of the Serpentine Gallery, where she sits on the Exhibitions Committee, and a patron of other arts’ organisations. Erin has a BSc from LSE and received her MBA from London Business School.
Dr David Dibosa is Director of Research and Interpretation at Tate where he leads the development of a thriving research community within and beyond the organisation. David also supports Tate’s interpretation team in engaging audiences in the galleries as well as online. He is a key representative of Tate across the museum and academic sectors.
Prior to this role, David was Reader of Museology at University of the Arts London, having taught at universities in London for more than twenty years and regularly lecturing around the world. He is co-author of Post-Critical Museology: Theory and Practice in the Art Museum (Routledge, 2013). He trained as a curator, after receiving his first degree from Girton College, Cambridge. He was awarded his PhD in Art History from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Alongside being Chair of Trustees at Whitechapel Gallery, David is also a Trustee of Art Fund. David’s television appearances include BBC One’s Big Painting Challenge, in which he was a judge. He is also currently a presenter for Art on the BBC, showing on BBC 4.
Jonny Kanagasooriam is Head of Content for BBC Sounds. He works with Radio & Music commissioning and production teams across Nations, Local, News, Children’s & Education, World Service as well as BBC Studios to deliver an on-demand music & speech content pipeline. Previously he worked for BBC Studios, Dazed Media, McCann London and Wunderman Thompson. He is a trustee of The Whitechapel Gallery, Hofesh Schecter Company as well as The Donmar Warehouse Theatre and previously a D&AD New Blood judge
Samantha Leonor Renovales Hill has over 21 years’ experience as a secondary school art teacher and over fourteen years as Head of Art at St. Paul’s Way Trust School in Tower Hamlets. Samantha also co-manages the THAT network (Tower Hamlets Artist Teacher network), which aims to support art departments across Tower Hamlets and art teachers as educators and artists. Samantha is currently working on her MA at Goldsmiths in Artist Teacher and Contemporary Practices.
A leading employment law solicitor with international law firm Rudnick Brown, Nicola Kerr was appointed as a Trustee in 2016.
Melanie Manchot is a London-based visual artist working with photography, film/video and installation as a performative and participatory practice. Her projects respond to specific sites and public spaces or particular communities to explore individual and collective identities. Recent and forthcoming solo exhibitions include Centre Pasquart, Biel (2019), MAC VAL, Paris (2018), Parafin, London (2018), Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne (2016), fig-2 at the ICA, London (2015), Galerie M, Bochum (2015), Toronto Photography Festival (2012), Nuit Blanche, Paris (2011) and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: Art Night, London (2017), Marl Video Art Award, Skulpturen Museum Glaskasten, Marl (2016), Group Therapy, FACT, Liverpool (2015), The Rhythm Is…, Museum Folkwang, Essen (2014). Manchot was shortlisted for the Jarman Award in 2017.
Sarah Miller, Luxury Brand Ambassador of The Wall Street Journal, runs Sarah Miller and Partners, an independent agency that creates brand strategies and content (digital and print) for a range of luxury and lifestyle brands. She was founding Editor-in-Chief of Condé Nast Traveller UK, and also launched Condé Nast Traveller in China. On leaving Condé Nast she was appointed European Editor of Travel + Leisure. Based in London, she has worked extensively with fashion, arts, design, lifestyle and travel opinion formers from around the globe, and is an Honorary Fellow of The Royal College of Art. Sarah also edits for a range of internationally renowned publishing houses. Recent projects include Studio 54 (Rizzoli, New York), London Uprising: Fifty Fashion Designers, One City and a Los Angeles companion title LA Fashion. She was also the author of Where Architects Sleep, (all published by Phaidon).
Ian Pleace chairs the Gallery’s Finance & Operations Committee, having joined the Board in October 2021. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Deloitte, where he had a 17-year career, focused on audit and corporate finance assignments for a range of clients in the publishing and media sectors. Ian has acted as the Director of Finance for BBC Nations & Regions, Goldsmiths’ College and, currently, the University of Roehampton. He serves on the boards of i2 Media Research, Cognivate Rehab, Relate and the National Tramway Museum at Crich in Derbyshire. He has previously acted as an independent member of the Audit Panel of the London Borough of Lewisham.
Myfanwy’s executive career was in public finance – as Corporate Director of Finance at Harrow Council and subsequently Managing Director of Corporate Services at the House of Commons. She is now an experienced Non-Executive Director and Trustee, with a portfolio that covers pensions, housing, and culture in the public and not-for-profit sectors.
Myfanwy is a Board Member and Chair of the Audit Committee at Nest, the government backed pension scheme for auto-enrolment, with 12m members and £30bn of assets under management; Board Member and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee at The Pensions Ombudsman; Director of a pensions administration company; and Senior Independent Board Member at Ocean Housing Group. She is also a Trustee of Shelter – the housing and homelessness charity, Newlyn Art Gallery in Cornwall, and an independent library. She was previously a Trustee of The Photographers’ Gallery for 7 years and sat on two Tate committees.
Ebele is a Venture Partner for Equity and Impact at Ada Ventures. Previously, Ebele led Facebook’s Africa, Middle East & Turkey public policy team, was Yahoo’s Global Head of Human Rights, and held roles at Nike, in civil society and as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk.
Ebele is a Trustee of the Young Vic and the Whitechapel Gallery, Chair of the Patron’s Board for John Akomfrah for the 2024 Venice Biennale, a Chisenhale Gallery Council member and a member of the Frieze 91 Committee. Ebele also directs the Chinedu Valentine Okobi Fund (in honor of her brother who was murdered by police in 2018), which funds transformative rest for social justice leaders.
Debashis Dey is an international M&A and finance partner in the Global Capital Markets practice of White & Case LLP, an international law firm. He has three decades of experience helping domestic and international clients to execute a spectrum of complex cross-border transactions. Debashis has a seasoned focus on European Financial Services and Middle Eastern based corporates but is also active in a number of other sectors including private equity, structured finance, Islamic finance and non-performing loans. He is a frequent advisor to boards of corporates and financial institutions.
Debashis has been a resident in East London since the late 1990’s and has been an avid observer of culture, art and cuisine. He is passionate about contemporary art and always seeks to meet artists in their local environments where possible.
Anya Gallaccio is a British artist, who creates sitespecific, minimalist installations and often works with organic matter (including chocolate, sugar, flowers and ice). Her use of organic materials results in natural processes of transformation and decay, meaning that Gallaccio is unable to predict the result of her installations. Something which at the start of an exhibition may be pleasurable, such as the scent of flowers or chocolate, would inevitably become increasingly unpleasant over time. The timely and site-specific nature of her work make it notoriously difficult to document. Her work therefore challenges the traditional notion that an art object or sculpture should essentially be a monument within a museum or gallery. Instead her work often lives through the memory of those that saw and experienced it – or the concept of the artwork itself.
Angela de la Cruz was born in La Coruña in Galicia, northwest Spain and lives and works in London. She studied philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela (1987) before moving to London, where she obtained a BA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College (1994) and an MA in Sculpture and Critical Theory from the Slade (1996). Angela’s art defies social norms and expresses the socio-political ambiguity of our times by challenging conventional ideas about how a painting or sculpture is understood. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2010 and was the recipient of the 2017 Premio Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Spain. In 2021 Angela de la Cruz was awarded the Sunny Dupree Family Award for a Woman Artist for her work at the Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, UK. She works and lives in London.
