Peter Palumbo, Baron Palumbo

The Right Honourable The Lord Palumbo
Peter Palumbo, 1974
Chair of the Arts Council of Great Britain
In office 1989–1994
Preceded by	The Lord Rees-Mogg
Succeeded by	The Earl of Gowrie
Personal details
Born	Peter Garth Palumbo (1935-07-20) 20 July 1935
Spouse(s)	Denia Wigram (m.1959, div.1977) Hayat Morowa
Relations	Lionel Wigram (former father-in-law) Kamel Morowa (father-in-law)
Children	6, including James Palumbo, Baron Palumbo of Southwark
Parent(s)	Rudolph Palumbo Elsie Gregory
Education	Scaitcliffe Eton College
Alma mater	Worcester College, Oxford
Occupation	property developer

Peter Garth Palumbo, Baron Palumbo (born 20 July 1935) is a property developer and art collector. Palumbo is a former chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain and a life peer. He sat as a Conservative in the House of Lords from 1991 to 2019.

Early life

Lord Palumbo is the son of Rudolph Palumbo, himself a major property developer, and his first wife Elsie Gregory. He was educated at Scaitcliffe, at Englefield Green, Surrey, and then at Eton College. At Eton, Palumbo was Captain of Games, as well as Captain of the school Racquets and Soccer teams. He studied law and jurisprudence at Worcester College, Oxford, where he graduated with a third-class degree. At the University of Oxford, he gained Blues at Racquets and Polo, and represented the University and the Pegasus Football Club at Soccer. For a brief spell he trained as an amateur with the Arsenal Football Club. As well as captaining and winning the Varsity match against Cambridge at Racquets in 1958, Palumbo was also on the winning side at Polo in the Intervarsity match in the same year.

In 1977, Palumbo would go on to win The Queens Cup in Polo at Windsor Great Park, and The Gold Cup at Cowdray Park.

Career

Notable property projects and homes

In the 1960s Palumbo commissioned Ludwig Mies van der Rohe to build a tower in London; although it was designed, it was never built.

In 1972 Palumbo bought Farnsworth House in the US (outside of Chicago), designed by Mies van der Rohe, to which Palumbo added the designer's furniture. He also expanded the grounds of the house by purchasing adjacent properties and placed in them the work of sculptors including Anthony Caro and Richard Serra. Palumbo sold the property at auction to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 2003. Palumbo also owns Kentuck Knob, a private house built by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Allegheny Mountains south of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; owned a unit in the 860–880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments in Chicago; and owned Le Corbusier's Maisons Jaoul in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris.

In 1994 Palumbo demolished the Mappin & Webb building in the City of London and replaced it at No 1 Poultry, with a building designed by the British architect, Sir James Stirling, which was opened by the Governor of the Bank of England, Eddie George.

Career

Palumbo was chairman of the Serpentine Gallery's board of trustees for over twenty years. Margaret Thatcher appointed him chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain from 1988 until 1994.

He was also Governor of The London School of Economics from 1976 to 1994 and the chancellor of the University of Portsmouth and the chairman of the Friends of Highgate Cemetery. He has been on the Board of Trustees of The Architecture Foundation. Palumbo was chair of the jury of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture.From 2002 to 2010, he was Governor of Whitgift School, England.

Palumbo led the fundraising effort to resurrect and refurbish the Church of St Stephen Walbrook in London, a building by Sir Christopher Wren which had been badly damaged during The Blitz (in World War II) – the sculptor Henry Moore was commissioned by Palumbo to build a stone altar for the church. The former rector of St Stephen Walbrook and founder of The Samaritans, Dr Chad Varah, was also the family chaplain.

Palumbo was a patron of The Tate Gallery and was instrumental in bringing Merce Cunningham and John Cage to the Barbican Centre, London, and later the musicians from Preservation Hall, New Orleans. He funded the restoration of the Penguin Pool at the London Zoo by Berthold Lubetkin and in 1993 presented The Turner Prize to the sculptor Rachel Whiteread at The Tate, London.

He was a Board Member of The Andy Warhol Foundation, New York, USA, The Royal Albert Hall, London, The Royal Shakespeare Company, MerchantBridge & Co. Ltd, Advisor Emeritus to Whitgift School, a Member of the Advisory Board to Lebanese International Finance Executives (LIFE), a Member of the International Advisory Committee for the Chicago Architecture Biennial, an Advisor to The Line Sculpture Walk and a Member of the Advisory Board of Cornell University, New York, for Architecture, Arts and Planning. He was Chairman of The Tate Gallery Foundation, the Painshill Park Appeal, Surrey, The Chad Varah Appeal, The Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, and the Positive View Foundation.

He was a Trustee of the Visiting Committee of the Mies van der Rohe archive at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Tate Gallery, the Whitechapel Gallery, the Architecture Foundation, the Natural History Museum, London, a Trustee of The Royal Fine Art Commission Trust, of The Design Museum, London, The West-Eastern Divan, The Zaha Hadid Foundation and the Royal National Theatre's Step Change Foundation UK. He was also a Trustee then Honorary Treasurer of the Writers' and Scholars' Educational Trust.

Palumbo had previously commissioned the architects Mies van der Rohe, Quinlan Terry, Richard Rogers, Shigeru Ban and Zaha Hadid. An early supporter of the works of Sean Scully and Sir Peter Blake, the sculptor Andy Goldsworthy received his first commission from Palumbo.

In 1993, he was awarded an Hon. DLitt by the University of Portsmouth and The National Order of The Southern Cross by the Republic of Brazil. In 1994, he was made an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Building and an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Structural Engineers. He was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Arts Award from Cranbrook Academy of Arts, Detroit, USA in 2002, and in 2009 was presented with a diploma by the legislature of the City of Buenos Aires in The Argentine Republic as a Guest of Honour to the City.

He was created a life peer, on nomination by Margaret Thatcher, on 4 February 1991 as Baron Palumbo, of Walbrook in the City of London, after the ward and street named after a former river and which is in the name of his redesigned church. He sat in the House of Lords until his retirement on 2 September 2019.

Personal life

He married Denia Wigram (the daughter of Lionel Wigram) in 1959 – together they had one son (James Palumbo), and two daughters. They divorced in 1977. After Denia died in 1986, he married Hayat Mrowa (daughter of the Lebanese newspaper publisher Kamel Mrowa, and ex-wife of businessman Ely Calil) with whom he had another son and two daughters.

Royal connections

Palumbo was a polo teammate of Prince Charles and the two were close until 1984 when the Prince publicly criticised Palumbo's plans by Mies van der Rohe near St Paul's Cathedral that Charles described as "a glass stump" which, faced with opposition, were not realised. In 1988, Palumbo became godfather to Princess Beatrice of York, the elder daughter of the Duke of York.

External links

• Official website
• Voting record at the Public Whip
• Restoration of St. Stephen Walbrook church