Yana Peel has been appointed CEO of London’s Serpentine Galleries, replacing the outgoing director of 25 years Julia Peyton-Jones.

“I am thrilled to be taking on the leadership of the Serpentine, an institution that I have admired and been involved with for so long,” Peel said in statement. “With Hans Ulrich as artistic director, I am fully committed to making the most exciting art and ideas of our time accessible to the broadest audiences,” she added.

Yana Peel
Photo: Ben Gabbe / Stringer/Getty Images

After graduating from LSE and working at Goldman Sachs, Peel founded the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, an organization that creates links between patrons and key people and institutions in the art world. The money raised goes towards helping galleries invest in emerging artists.

Peel is leaving her position as CEO Intelligence Squared to join the Serpentine’s artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist in running the Hyde Park galleries, with the aim of taking it into a “new exciting phase.”

“I am looking forward to working in partnership with Yana Peel and embarking on an exciting new chapter in the history of the Serpentine,” Obrist said in a statement. “I am totally committed to continuing to make the Serpentine the place where artists want to work most and to be able to present our program in ever new formats and to wider audiences,” he added.

The Serpentine has also announced two new trustees: the artist Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who exhibited at the gallery last summer, and Mike Sherwood, the chairman Goldman Sachs.

The 2015 Serpentine Pavillion at night.
Photo: Courtesy The Serpentine Gallery.

The Serpentine Gallery is one of the best-loved art institutions in London, globally famous for its adventurous annual pavilions and glamorous summer parties, as well as its stellar exhibition program.

“The Serpentine has a well-earned reputation for embracing new and exciting ideas, and I am confident that Yana’s and Hans Ulrich’s bold new leadership will enable us to continue pushing new boundaries for contemporary artists and audiences,” the Serpentine chairman Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.

“Yana combines an extraordinary record of service to the arts with outstanding business experience. Hans Ulrich will provide not only artistic vision, but also continuity with the mission he and Julia Peyton-Jones so passionately worked to achieve,” Bloomberg added.