Obituary of Lionel Lambourne, OBE
Lionel Lambourne (1933–2010) had a distinguished museum career in a variety of roles. He joined the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1958, in the Department of Prints & Drawings, but also worked in the Education Department and was Assistant Keeper of Paintings. His many accomplishments at the V&A include raising the profile of comic and sporting art, introducing travelling shows to Japan, and creating the V&A staff pantomime, which is still going strong.
From The Times, 11 March 2010
It is not only the museum world that feels the loss of Lionel Lambourne for he was one of those rare figures who possessed the precious talent to engage the interests of the wider world in art objects and the stories behind them. Although a serious scholar who made significant contributions in several fields, it is as a great populariser and brilliant lecturer with the ability to hold audiences aged from 9 to 90 entranced that many will remember him first and foremost.
Whether discussing the work of Arts and Crafts designers, the history of circus or the depiction of the giraffe in art, Lambourne could bring the subject alive, sharing his own enthusiastic aesthetic responses and intellectual curiosity through an exuberant mix of original thoughts, provoking asides and wonderfully apt anecdotes. He used to quote the maxim that 'a good lecture or exhibition ought to contain something to offend everyone', but he believed fervently that the museum curator’s task was ultimately to win over, to communicate as much as to preserve. The fact that many of his memorable talks were punctuated by snatches of comic song or, on occasions when old-fashioned slide projectors jammed, with impromptu displays of shadow puppetry, merely added to the general sense of unpredictable gaiety; his method was always as much music hall as lecture hall.
Lionel Lambourne was born in 1933 in Southampton and had a largely unhappy wartime childhood which offered little in the way of encouragement or opportunity. Later, moving to Wembley and attending the County School, he discovered the delight of performing to an audience, emerging as a leading member of the school dramatic society. He won a place at Nottingham University where he read English and philosophy. Still more interested in dramatics, he enjoyed the convivial atmosphere and blossomed; as a result, he left with a third, but undoubtedly having 'found himself'.
In 1955 he was called up for National Service and served for 17 months with an artillery regiment stationed in Germany. Though few young men of his generation could have been constitutionally more unsuited to the military life, Gunner Lambourne thoroughly enjoyed his period of service, becoming a popular figure, easily picking up the language and, during odd periods of leave, first developing the ingenious ability — of which he made much use in subsequent years — of reaching the seemingly most inaccessible places by use of exiguous public transport.
Back in England he found a stopgap job in the local library, but shortly afterwards was alerted to an adverisement for junior museum curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum. On the day of interviews, in 1958, he met another applicant who would become his wife, Maureen; they were married in 1962. Lambourne was assigned to the Department of Prints and Drawings, where he came under the influence of two great figures, James Laver and Brian Reade. Although 'museum assistants' were expected to deal with a wide range of material and all the routine tasks, he began even then to gravitate towards English and French art of the 19th century.
At that time the generally accepted career trajectory for the bright and ambitious involved 'a stint in the provinces'. Accordingly, Lambourne took up the post of Keeper of Art at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, where from 1961 to 1963 he worked with a collection rich in works by the Pre-Raphaelites, becoming, as was his way, as much interested in minor figures such as the Symbolist Simeon Solomon as the more obvious stars such as Burne-Jones. In 1963 Lambourne returned to London to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow. During three years as curator there he became increasingly fascinated not only by Morris but in the achievements of the designers and makers of the wider Arts and Crafts Movement, a subject to which he would revert in one of his most important books, Utopian Craftsmen, published in 1980.
After the Morris Gallery, Lambourne spent four years from 1966 to 1970 at Leicester Museum, before returning to the V&A as a lecturer in the Education Department. Then a semi-autonomous band of genial eccentrics, the department proved an ideal niche and offered Lambourne ample opportunity to develop existing interests and explore many new ones. Apart from his own researches and the main commitment to public talks, he also enthusiastically embraced the role of mentor, becoming an inspirational tutor to colleagues both from within the V&A and outside working for the Museums Association Diploma. Always kind and generous with his time, he did much to help many colleagues individually. To some degree, too, he played a part in changing the very culture of the Museum, helping to break down the institution’s then traditional snobbishness and authoritarianism; those two unappealing traits of which Lambourne was always delightfully devoid.
Later, with the move to become Assistant Keeper of Paintings, he emerged as one of the most unusual museum professionals of the day, possessed of a sound knowledge of the mainstream, certainly; but uniquely interested in the quirky and the unusual. As the unofficial 'curator of silly art', his range of knowledge was unrivalled, embracing so much that was customarily overlooked or dismissed as mere 'popular art'. Genres that gave him lasting delight were caricature and comic art and sporting pictures, and he did much to raise their respective profiles; he was a guiding light and instrumental in the establishment of both the London-based Cartoon Art Trust and the British Sporting Art Trust with its centre at Newmarket. This latter interest in the art of racing led Lambourne to undertake one of his most significant exhibition projects, the hugely successful Royal Academy show Derby Day 200 in 1979. As curator, the duty fell to him to show round one of the greatest experts in the field, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Lambourne was filled with trepidation lest he be caught out on questions of bloodlines or names of winners and jockeys; in the event all went well and each charmed the other.
In Lambourne’s final decade at the V&A he was involved in the staging of many exhibitions and smaller displays, for a good number of which he prepared catalogues. He was also instrumental in developing the now well-established idea of sending major shows to Japan, an enterprise which gave him the chance to visit several times a country which had long fascinated him and which he came to love. Among the subjects for which he had a special affection, the works of Simeon Solomon, British fairy paintings and the art of the 1890s all became themes for London shows, the last as his chosen swan song before retiring from the V&A as head of paintings in 1993, the year in which he was appointed OBE. Later still, he made the superbly imaginative selection for the show at the Barbican in 2000 celebrating the centenary of Oscar Wilde. In these years Lambourne had also begun to write more, creating a steady stream of publications ranging from small books on Victorian Genre Painting, 1982, and Caricature, 1983, to the later mighty compendium Victorian Paintings, 1999. Two substantial studies, The Aesthetic Movement, 1996, and Japonisme, 2005, are both standard works on their subjects in which mature judgment and sparkling wit combine.
Curiously, the achievement of which Lambourne was most proud was his creation of the V&A staff pantomime, the first of which was staged in 1981. Based on the classic pantomimes which he adored, he wrote scripts which were daringly satirical of the Museum’s management policies and himself essayed the role of the dame with a genial relish that smoothed over the rougher edges of the productions. Raising substantial funds for charities, such as Lambourne’s favourite, the Albany Taxi Fund for Children, the pantomime became a wonderful tradition that did much — in both difficult and, more recently, in happier times in the Museum — to bring staff together and helped to make the V&A what it is today. Few great scholars and curators can also have left such a legacy of laughter.
Lambourne is survived by his wife Maureen and their daughter and son.
Lionel Lambourne, OBE, V&A curator and writer, was born on December 1, 1933 and died after a long illness on February 12, 2010, aged 76.
Reproduced with kind permission of The Times
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