Lund Humphries Foundation for Visual Arts

Registered charity number: 1211237

Lund Humphries Foundation for Visual Arts (LHFVA) is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) founded by Scolar Fine Art Ltd, the company which owns Lund Humphries. Its mission is to encourage and advance knowledge and appreciation of the visual arts by the general public, and to support research and academic study of the history and contemporary practice of fine art, architecture and design.

LHFVA will pursue its educational charitable purpose primarily through the publication of specialist books on the visual arts. These books will:

• Promote general understanding and appreciation of the work of artists, architects and designers;
• Provide essential learning and reference resources for visual-arts professionals and students;
• Disseminate publicly funded research in an accessible, illustrated format so that it reaches a broader audience;
• Document the collections and collection histories of UK art museums.

New Lund Humphries publishing contracts agreed from January 2025 onwards will be published as LHFVA books, with production costs fully covered by external grants and donations. LHFVA's charitable status creates new opportunities for tax-efficient donations from both companies and individuals.

In addition to publishing, in the longer term LHFVA intends to:

• Support visual-arts research programmes and exhibitions through grants to scholars and arts institutions in the UK;
• Initiate and manage an annual award for outstanding new research in the study of British modern and contemporary art (the Peter Gregory Award, named after Lund Humphries' former Chairman).

Read the press release announcing the launch of LHFVA here.

The Trustees of LHFVA

Imogen Abed has worked in academic and professional publishing, as Sales and Marketing Director at Jessica Kingsley Publishers, and at Ashgate Publishing, and has been an executive director at Lund Humphries. She has a degree in English and American Literature, and a masters in Creative Writing, and has worked as a freelance script reader. 

Dr Catherine Manning read History at St Hugh’s College, Oxford and subsequently completed a doctorate at King’s College London in 18th-century economic history.  Her career has included time teaching both in the UK and in India and she has also published five novels writing as Elizabeth Ironside. She is married to David, a former diplomat, whom she accompanied on postings to Warsaw, New Delhi, Paris, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Brussels and the United States. She is a Trustee of the American Museum & Gardens, Bath. 

Lucy Myers is Managing Director of Lund Humphries, an imprint which she has led for over 20 years, overseeing its expansion into new subject-areas and publishing formats, developing partnerships with art and educational institutions, and building a new programme of publishing on the art market, museums and curating. She has a background in Modern Languages with a Degree in French and German from Trinity College, Cambridge. She is also a classically trained singer and pianist with a Diploma in Music Performance, is a former Trustee and current singing member of Londinium chamber choir, and co-directs as a volunteer the community singing group The Hackney Songbirds.

Professor Alan Short is an architect and the 9th President of Clare Hall, Cambridge, the graduate-research college. He was appointed the 5th Professor of Architecture at the University of Cambridge in 2001, succeeding Sir Leslie Martin and Sir Colin St John Wilson. At Cambridge, he leads a highly interdisciplinary group working on how to deliver very low-carbon buildings and cities, and as an architect of important sustainable buildings he has won the Green Building of the Year Prize, the RIBA President's Research Award and numerous other prizes. In China he is a Distinguished Professor of the People’s Republic, co-directing the national research centre in green buildings, and is a Guest Professor at Zhejiang University. He sits on the Cambridge University Council and the General Board and will be Chair of the Colleges’ Committee for 2026-8.

Alice Strang is an independent art historian and curator. She is also an Associate Director at Lyon & Turnbull fine art auctioneers, where she is a Senior Specialist in Modern & Contemporary Art. She was previously a Senior Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland. She lectures and writes widely across Modern British and Modern Scottish art. She is a Saltire Society Outstanding Woman of Scotland and a BBC Expert Woman. She is also a Lund Humphries author, having contributed an essay to the 2024 title Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: The Glaciers, edited by Rob Airey.