[30
NOV 00] UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK NEWS
Turner Prize Founder Honoured By Warwick
The
man who founded the Turner Prize and gave the University of Warwick
one of its most famous sculptures is to be given an honorary
doctorate.
Oliver
Prenn is one of three people who will be given awards at the Winter
Degree ceremony on 12 January, where he will be presented with an Hon
DLitt.
Also
selected are Sir John Browne, Group Chief Executive of BP Amoco, who
will get an Hon DSc and Lord Bhikhu Parekh, chair of the Committee of
the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain, who receives an Hon LLD.
A
businessman and patron of the arts, Oliver Prenn is Chairman of the
Contemporary Arts Society, an independent charity committed to
supporting innovative artists which has given over 4,000 works to
museums throughout Britain.
In
1984, he founded the Turner Prize, and financed it for its first three
years. He is also involved in a variety of arts organisations,
including the National Theatre Development Council and the Amadeus
Scholarship Fund.
Mr
Prenn has strong links with the University of Warwick: the Prenn
Foundation, which he founded with his wife Nyda, presented to the
university the Richard Deacon sculpture Let’s Not Be Stupid,
situated on campus opposite the bookshop, which was recently exhibited
at the Royal Academy’s ‘Art Treasures of England’ survey.
The
university also has a number of works owned by Mr Prenn on long-term
loan, including works by Theresa Oulton, Bruce Irwin and Tricia
Gillman.
Group
Chief Executive of BP Amoco. Sir John joined British Petroleum Company
in 1966, becoming group Treasurer and Chief Executive of BP Finance
International, 1984-86; Executive Vice-President and Chief Financial
Officer Standard Oil Company, 1986-87; Chief Executive Officer,
Standard Oil Production Company, 1987-89, and Chief Executive BP
Exploration Company 1989-95.
He
was appointed an executive director of BP in 1991, and Group Chief
Executive in 1995. BP and Amoco merged in 1998, and in July 2000
acquired Burmah Castrol.
Sir
John is also a Trustee of the British Museum and a member of the
governing body of London Business School. He received his knighthood
in 1998.
BP’s
historical archive is sited at the University of Warwick alongside the
Modern Records Centre.
Lord
Bhikhu Parekh has been Professor of Political Theory at the University
of Hull since 1982. He also chaired the Committee on the Future of
Multi-Ethnic Britain, which began work in 1998 and has recently
produced its report.
Educated
at the University of Bombay and the University of London, he taught at
the London School of Economics and the University of Glasgow before
moving to Hull as Lecturer in 1964.
He
has held visiting professorships at universities in Europe and North
America. From 1978-82, he was a member of the Rampton – Swann
Committee of Inquiry into the Educational Problems of Ethnic Minority
Children.
He
was a member of the Commission for Racial Equality from 1985 to 1990,
and since 1996 has been Vice- President of the Gandhi Foundation. In
1991, he was British Asian of the Year. Lord Parekh’s extensive
publications include The Decolonisation of Imagination, 1995, and
Gandhi, 1997.
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