Obituary of Margaret Helen Longhurst
Margaret Helen Longhurst, Keeper of Architecture
Margaret Helen Longhurst (1882–1958) was an art historian with a special interest in European ivory carvings. She joined the Victoria & Albert Museum as a volunteer after the end of WWI, later becoming a full-time member of staff. In 1926 she published the first coordinated attempt to assess English ivories. She became Keeper of the Department of Architecture and Sculpture in 1938—the first woman Keeper in a national museum.
From The Times, 28 January 1958
Miss M H Longhurst, Keeper of the Department of Architecture and Sculpture at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1938 to 1942, died on Sunday at her home at Aldbourne, Wiltshire. She was 75.
Both in her own specialist studies and in her official position as the first woman Keeper in a national museum, Margaret Longhurst was a pioneer, though this was the last thing she would have thought of in connexion with herself; indeed, she would have been horrified at the idea of so romantic a label being attached to her. Innately modest and very shy with anyone she did not know, Margaret Longhurst was entirely devoted to the subject or the institution for which she worked and was not even remotely conscious of the world's recognition of her personal contributions to art history, either for ivory carvings or later for Italian sculpture. While she always took her research very seriously it was otherwise with regard to herself, and she pursued her studies against a background of astonishingly broad humanity and catholicity of interest.
A modest income enabled her early in the century to indulge a passion for travelling which she turned to good purpose in laying the foundations for her work on European art.
Margaret Helen Longhurst was born on August 5, 1882, and after private education she began early to specialize on European ivory carvings, the study with which her name will always be associated. Shortly after the 1914-18 War she came to work at the Victoria and Albert Museum, first as a voluntary worker and later as a member of the staff. In 1926 she published her book on English ivories, which represented the first coordinated attempt to assess this immensely important branch of English art.
In 1927 she published the first, and in 1929, the second, volume of the official catalogue of the ivory carvings in the Victoria and Albert Museum. These books remain today as standard works of reference. After the completion of the ivory catalogues she collaborated with Sir Eric Madagan in the completion of the official catalogue of the museum's magnificent collection of Italian sculpture, which was published in 1932. In 1938 she succeeded as Keeper of the Department of Architecture and Sculpture from which she retired in 1942. Even then, indifferent health and the difficulties of retirement on a limited income did not prevent her throwing herself with enthusiasm into a new hobby - gardening - with a specialist interest in roses and rock plants.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Times
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