Lars Tharp new director of Foundling Museum

The amiable and brilliant Lars Tharp is the new director of the Foundling Museum where he will begin work on 1 October 2008. Lars follows the remarkable Rhian Harris who has overseen every stage of the creation of the Foundling in its new form as one of the outstanding museums in Britain and  is moving on to take over as Director of the V&A's Museum of Childhood.

Lars is familiar as one of the long-term stars of BBC1's The Antiques Road Show. He is a leading ceramics expert and general all-round Hogarth nut, which is just as well since the Foundling contains three of Hogarth's greatest paintings as well as works by Allan Ramsay, John Michael Rysbrack, Joshua Reynolds and John Singleton Copley. It also houses the Gerald Coke Handel Collection and the fair copy of the score of Handel's Messiah. Louis-François Roubiliac's terracotta bust of Handel is one of the glories of the Foundling's Picture Gallery, which is dominated by Hogarth's unforgettable portrait of Captain Coram.