Leslie Primo

Art historian, Leslie Primo is an author and broadcaster, graduating from Birkbeck, University College, London with an MA in Renaissance studies. He lectured at the National Gallery, London for 18 years as well as in the same capacity at the National Portrait Gallery for 10 years where he continues to lecture. He has also lectured for the Royal Academy, the Victoria and Albert Museum, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, The Wallace Collection and currently lectures for Martin Randall Travel, John Hall Venice, and The Arts Society. He currently teaches a variety of art history courses at Imperial College, London, the City Literary, London and The Course at the University Women’s Club, Mayfair. In his broadcasting capacity, Leslie Primo has made frequent appearances on the BBC speaking in Turner: The Secret Sketchbooks, (currently still airing on BBC iPlayer), LS Lowry: The Unheard Tapes (currently still airing on BBC iPlayer), Renaissance: The Blood and the Beauty (currently still airing on BBC iPlayer), the Life of Michelangelo, and presented Turner: Light and Landscape. He was a contributor to the Oxford Companion Guide to Black British History, an art history consultant for the Getty publication, Balthazar: A Black African King in Medieval and Renaissance Art, was an art history consultant for DK Life Stories: Leonardo da Vinci – a children’s book for ages 7-11, and was published by the Royal Academy Magazine for the Entangled Pasts exhibition, 2023-2024. Leslie Primo’s book, ‘The Foreign Invention of British Art’ is published by Thames & Hudson, 2025.