My friend and former colleague Nick Levinson, who has died aged 80, was a pioneering TV producer of Open University (OU) arts programming with the BBC, who helped transform public and academic interest in western art history and architecture.
His work covered a range of subjects from the European Renaissance through to modernism and on to the contemporary art of Africa, India and First Nations Australia. For more than 50 years the inspirational impact of the OU and its public programming has reached into every part of British society, and much of that success was due to the creative talent of the first generation of academics and producers. Nick retained those personal characteristics until he retired in 1998, with 188 OU production credits to his name.
Nick first worked in BBC music and arts as a researcher in the mid-1960s but discovered his metier when the OU was founded in 1969 and the BBC began recruiting production staff. He joined the fledgling enterprise at Alexandra Palace to create and develop, with academic colleagues at Milton Keynes, a new distance learning experience using TV and radio.
Of the 22 OU arts courses on which Nick worked as BBC series producer, several, including history of architecture and design 1890-1939 (1975-1982), and modern art and modernism (1983-1992) are themselves now the subject of PhD theses. His filming took him all over Europe, to Africa, India, the US and Australia.
Nick was born in London to Frank Levinson, a solicitor, and Sylvia (nee Schloss), a keen pianist. Brought up to have a wide interest in the arts, Nick went to St Christopher school, Letchworth, a frontrunner in progressive co-education founded on the tenets of theosophy, equality and vegetarianism. He then studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
In 1966, just after he completed his BA, the river Arno burst its banks, flooding the heart of Florence and endangering its heritage. Nick joined the army of international volunteers that rushed to save what could be salvaged, spending months in mud, forging deep friendships and a lifelong passion for Tuscany.
Nick met Deanna Hatcher, a production assistant, at the BBC and they married in 1971. She was a mainstay in his passions for renovating houses, collecting art, creating gardens and appreciating nature.
Deanna died in 2022. Nick is survived by their children, Selina and Charlie, and three grandchildren, Arthur, Heena and Sheba.
