The National Gallery has good news for Freud fans – but will they ever appoint a chair? | Opinion

Just two weeks left of the terrific Lucian Freud self-portraits show at the Royal Academy. But fear not, Freud fans: in two years there will be a major retrospective of his work at the National Gallery. Yet to be officially announced, the exhibition will include around 70 works of the great artist to mark the 100th anniversary of his birth.

The Tate would perhaps be the more obvious home for such a show, as its remit covers works from 1900 onwards, while the National Gallery looks after the earlier centuries. I hear the Tate did “bid” for a Freud show for 2022, but the National prevailed. Freud’s estate points out that the National Gallery was always his favourite.

The artist, notably media-shy, publicly helped the 2008 campaign to raise money for it and the National Galleries of Scotland to buy two threatened Titians – Diana and Actaeon, and Diana and Callisto. Freud was also so fond of the Trafalgar Square gallery that he persuaded officials to let him wander around on his own at night to admire the masterpieces. Artists such as Titian, Rubens, Goya and Holbein very much inspired his own paintings, and the 2022 exhibition will reflect these influences.

It’s seven months since Hannah Rothschild’s sudden resignation as head of the National Gallery’s board of trustees – two years before her term was up. Her father, Jacob, had been chair himself from 1985-1991, but as far as I know, no other Rothschild scion is being lined up. Nor a Getty. John Paul Getty was a massive financial supporter of the gallery before his son, Mark, chaired from 2008-16. It’s an unpaid and reasonably time-consuming post whose incumbent is chosen by the trustees, who are themselves appointed by the government. No white smoke yet, but a decision may be imminent: perhaps the acting chair, businessman John Kingman; or Moya Greene, former CEO of Royal Mail?

The most intriguing new trustee, appointed in November, is Tony Hall, director general and editor-in-chief of the BBC. A very busy bloke, then, but he knows his arts and is an operator at the highest level. Such a role might also take his mind off tough times ahead, with a government increasingly hostile to the licence fee. And there is a precedent for a media editor being boss of an art gallery: Lionel Barber, who has just stepped down from the Financial Times after 14 years, has been the Tate’s chair since March 2018.

“Very mild threat”. These three little words appear on the British Board of Film Classification title screen for Little Women. When I saw the U movie (left) the other night, the words raised a chuckle from the audience. Now, I can understand the phrase “very mild weather”, but “very mild threat”?

After later searching the BBFC’s website, I found an explanation. Spoiler alert: Amy falls through the ice on a pond but is rescued within seconds. Plus, there is a death, though we are spared the scene itself, and some sororal tussling. You have been warned.