Obituary of Elizabeth Mary Aslin

Elizabeth Aslin (1923–89) was an expert in many aspects of the history of the decorative arts. She joined the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1947 in the Department of Circulation. In 1964 she was appointed Assistant Keeper of the Bethnal Green Museum (now the Museum of Childhood) and made many changes to the research methods employed there. In 1968 she became Assistant Director of the V&A, the first woman to reach full Keeper grade combined with an Assistant Director role.

From The Guardian, 2 May 1989

Shining in the aesthetic line

The art historian Elizabeth Aslin joined the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1947. The facts of her career provide few indications of the powerful, affectionate and humorous personality behind them.

She was one of the first members of a team assembled by Peter Floud which in the 1950s made the Department of Circulation this country's brightest and most advanced centre of 19th and 20th century studies. The Museum's 1952 exhibition of Victorian and Edwardian Decorative Arts pioneered 19th century studies. The Circulation team supplied the backbone for later work on the decorative arts after the 1850s.

The 1950s was a gold period for this department as pioneers in an area of art history neglected for a century. Elizabeth wrote the first serious study of Victorian furniture: her book remains standard. A second book - on the Aesthetic Movement, marked with her highly developed sense of humour and appreciate of the decorative - is still unrivalled.

She combined a keen sense of history with a practical no-nonsense approach, invaluable in a department whose members were expected to research, design and assemble their own exhibitions as well as run a complex loan programme. In 1964 she was appointed part-time as Assistant Keeper in charge of the Bethnal Green Museum, then a backwater full of dolls, toys and the unsung residue of the V&A's permanent 20th century collections. Bethnal Green was galvanised into action. The study of dolls and toys was put on a serious and efficient basis with proper museum principles of research and record professionally applied. In another pioneering project, the 20th century British collections were exhibited in 1966-7 as Forty Years of Modern Design, exciting much controversy over 1920s and 1930s designs.

The Director, Sir John Pope-Hennessy, decreed that Bethnal Green should embark on the vast and largely ignored field of 19th century continental decorative arts. The V&A owned an impressive collection of in many cases huge objects acquired from 1844 onwards, most of them unseen due to lack of display space at the main museum. Elizabeth threw herself into these uncharted seas and quickly developed a passion that lasted the rest of her life.

This new display became a permanent gallery on the top floor of the Bethnal Green Museum in 1970. Her delight in the riches of the collections, with their often intriguing histories, was captivating and her total support and encouragement, by no means a standard attitude towards junior grades, made the subject irresistible. The collection has now been moved to the V&A and re-displayed.

In 1968 she had become Assistant Director to Sir John Pope-Hennessy, responsible for 'Works': she commissioned, for instance, the first and only thorough survey of accessibility for the handicapped to the Museum buildings. Her responsibility at Bethnal Green continued which took great stamina and courage.

In 1974, on the arrival of Roy Strong as Director, she was 'directed' to Bethnal Green full time for her remaining seven years of devoted service to the V&A.

The Museum was her life, in private as well as professionally. But she was also an enriching, interested and sociable companion. She enjoyed opera from grand to G&S, 'Patience' in particular; travel, especially in Italy, France and latterly Greece; and the society of a wide variety of friends.

She left the Museum in 1981 and in all that has happened since her achievements have probably already been clouded or forgotten. She was the first woman to reach full Keeper grade combined with an Assistant Director role. And it was because of her single-minded persistence that the Museum's elaborately tiled 'Gamble & Poynter' rooms - the original refreshment and grill rooms - were rescued from being metalwork stores and returned to their present splendour in time for the 1976 Minton exhibition.

After leaving the Museum she continued to pursue her interests as a long-serving member of the Victorian Society and a founder member of the Decorative Arts Society. She researched 19th century continental ceramics and the designs of E W Godwin. Recently, though desperately ill, she took a typically active part in the present events at the V&A.

Elizabeth was a challenging, demanding, sometimes infuriating, sometimes alarming Keeper to work for. She was also forthright, emotional, loyal, supportive and a fighter. In a Museum generation with many powerful personalities, she was one of the more formidable.

Jennifer Hawkins Opie

Elizabeth Mary Aslin, born March 23, 1923; died April 14, 1989

Reproduced with kind permission of Jennifer Hawkins Opie and The Guardian
©  The Guardian