Michael Stanley - Telegraph As director of the Milton Keynes Gallery from 2004 to 2009, he was responsible for two Turner Prize-nominated exhibitions, including Yeah... you, baby you! by Phil Collins in 2006. This year he was on the judging panel of the prize. Stanley was held in great affection by colleagues and artists, who regarded him as one of their own. In a post on the gallery's website, Jenny Saville, whose first solo show in a British public gallery he curated earlier in the year, described Stanley as a man who "wasn't scared of history or of being radical. He was as likely to be enthusing about working with a sculptor in his nineties, [as] raising funds to facilitate a young filmmakers" vision. His poetic sensibility, combined with a can-do attitude where everything's possible, is what made him so magnetic and convincing. Another post reads: "Always giving, always a pleasure, everything solvable, nothing a problem, always yes! Let's do it! The second of three children, Michael Stanley was born at Widnes, Cheshire, on July 23 1975, into a Roman Catholic family. His father was a construction manager and his mother a college administrator. He was educated at SS Fisher and More High School, where he was head boy. Although he excelled academically, from an early age his guiding passion was art - making it and enjoying it. At the age of 17 he won a scholarship to the Ruskin School of Drawing in Oxford, graduating with a First in 1995. As curator of art at Compton Verney in Warwickshire from 2000, Stanley oversaw a series of major projects, including the capital development of the gallery, which opened in 2004. Moving to the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, in 2002, he curated a Turner Prize-nominated exhibition by Anya Gallaccio as well as a critically acclaimed exhibition by George Shaw, What I Did This Summer, and engineered collaborations with modern art institutions abroad. In 2004 he became director of Milton Keynes Gallery, where he staged a series of first British solo exhibitions for artists including Roger Hiorns, Phillip Allen, Pae White, Carlos Amorales, Carlos Bunga and Adrian Paci. He was relentlessly imaginative: a colleague has recalled walking with Stanley through a field of wheat outside the town "looking for a poem we'd seeded in poppies." He moved to Oxford in January 2009, and in the same year curated a survey exhibition of work by Marcel Broodthaers and an exhibition of work by the late James Lee Byars for the Venice Biennale. A little over a week after his death Modern Art Oxford opened two exhibitions which illustrate the breadth of his vision: Platform, a two-part exhibition showcasing the works of young graduate artists from across south-east England, and the first major solo show of the contemporary French artist Jean-Luc Moulène. Michael Stanley is survived by his wife Carrina, an artist, and their three children. Michael Stanley, born July 23 1975, died September 21 2012