I am taking the liberty of posting a photograph of Elizabeth Esteve-Coll as she was in 1982, not long before I first met her. It comes from the University of Surrey Archives (Photo credit: @UniOfSurrey Archives (US/PH/2/7/10 ©University of Surrey).

All the photographs of her when she was at the V&A show her, not surprisingly, looking vastly much more worn down and harassed:-

I have been interested by the comments on my post on Elizabeth Esteve-Coll which have inevitably made me think again about the issues surrounding her still highly controversial re-organisation of the V&A.

I notice that she is described on Wikipedia as a librarian and in retrospect I think she did bring some of her views as a librarian from the National Art Library to the wider collection of the V&A: that the core responsibility of the museum was not ‘scholarship’ in the abstract, but to look after and care for the collection, catalogue it digitally, and make it freely and widely available to the public. At the time, I remember the staff of the British Museum were very critical of this attitude, but in the light of what has happened at the British Museum more recently, this switch in resources to collections care was not only necessary but highly desirable.

She inspired fierce loyalty in a way which was non-hierarchical and indeed anti-hierarchical.

We have been having an Alison Wilding fest – or, more to the point, she has.

We first went to her exhibition at the Heong Gallery at Downing, the perfect space for her drawing and a small, highly select group of her smaller works:-

Then, the monograph on her drawings On Paper appeared, a very beautiful piece of book production with essays on her work.

And tonight the opening of her exhibition Testing the Objects of Affection at Alison Jacques:-

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/sep/17/sculptor-alison-wilding-testing-the-objects-of-affection

I have somehow managed to gain access to the obituary of Elizabeth Esteve-Coll in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, a well-informed account of her which must have been written with personal knowledge.

I knew some, but certainly not all of her history – her schooling in Darlington and her time at Trinity College, Dublin, but not the amount of time she spent at sea with her Spanish husband.

The obituary perhaps does not convey how charismatic as well as energetic she was when she arrived as Keeper of the National Art Library in 1985, which was why the senior staff supported her appointment as Director in 1987 (this may have been forgotten).

She was recruited to reform the museum’s management.  More of her thinking will become clear when the recordings in National Life Stories are released.

I owe her a lot.  She was a remarkable person, ahead of her time, and she remained very active behind-the-scenes at the Wolfson Foundation and Sainsbury Centre after having to stand down as Vice Chancellor of the University of East Anglia because of her MS.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/09/17/elizabeth-esteve-coll-victoria-and-albert-roy-strong-art/

As autumn approaches, I realise that it may be harder to sit outside in the gloaming:-

Each year, a highlight of Romilly’s year is the annual Goldsmiths Fair which opens next Tuesday at Goldsmith’s Hall, close to St. Paul’s. 

It is an opportunity to see not only her work, but the work also of two of her ‘translators’ and many other jewellers.  You can even get half-price tickets if you follow the link.

Here is a preview:-

https://mailchi.mp/09fe82669a43/goldsmiths-fair-2024-16517460?e=9dc0f9b85b

My second excursion prompted by Open House was to St. Barnabas, Hackney which I had somehow overlooked in Nairn’s London – ‘the inside is the best church of its date in London’.  I am not sure that there are many churches of its date in London, just before the First World War, when Charles Reilly was already established as Professor of Architecture in Liverpool.  It’s a sort of stripped down, brick-and-concrete version of Torcello:-

There is an excellent opportunity to visit St. Anne’s, Limehouse over the next fortnight when the church is open every day from 10 to 4 for Open House, made the more interesting by having an exhibition on the long history of the six surviving Hawksmoor churches, including material about the near demolition of St. Mary Woolnoth in the nineteenth century and their rediscovery and reappraisal by Elizabeth and Wayland Young in the 1950s.  There are some disarmingly salacious communications from John Betjeman to Elizabeth Young who he obviously fancied like mad and in those days made no effort to conceal.  The church was used as a backdrop for a Vogue fashion shoot in 1962 and there is a very informative video of Nicholas Serota talking about the Whitechapel’s exhibition on Hawksmoor in 1976, which must have led to the establishment of the Friends of Christ Church, Spitalfields in 1977.  And there are big wall mounted photographs by Hélène Binet first shown at the Venice Biennale.

The church could not have looked more beautiful in the September sun:-

I never thought that I would enjoy visiting Space House in a side street off Holborn.  But it is totally remarkable, not least as a current project of attentive renovation, every detail of its original design thoughtfully preserved apart from the petrol station on the ground and the car parking below.

Designed by George Marsh under Richard Seifert for Harry Hyams, built 1964 to 1968:-