Staff
Soane's will had provided for there to be a Curator, and an Inspectress (the post was created for Soane's housekeeper and close family friend Mrs Sarah Conduitt). The architectural historian Sir John Summerson was Curator of the Museum from 1945 to 1984. For much of this period he was assisted by Dorothy Stroud who served as Inspectress from 1945 to 1985.
Summerson was succeeded by Peter Thornton who moved from the Victoria and Albert Museum to take up the post. Thornton retired in 1995, and was followed by Margaret Richardson, the first woman to hold the title of Curator. She had succeeded Stroud as Inspectress in 1985, and served as Curator until 2005, with Helen Dorey as Inspectress (1995- ). Since 2005 the Director of the Museum has been Tim Knox, formerly Head Curator of the National Trust, under whose leadership the Museum has embarked on the ambitious 'Opening up the Soane' project combining the restoration of Nos 12 and 13, including a number of lost historic features, with improved visitor and conservation facilities. The 'Opening up the Soane' project also includes a programme of audience development, a new website and on-line catalogues of the collections.
Read more about this topic: Sir John Soane's Museum
Famous quotes containing the word staff:
“Each one threw down his staff, and they became snakes; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up theirs.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 7:12.
“For the first fourteen years for a rod they do whine,
For the next as a pearl in the world they do shine,
For the next trim beauty beginneth to swerve,
For the next matrons or drudges they serve,
For the next doth crave a staff for a stay,
For the next a bier to fetch them away.”
—Thomas Tusser (c. 1520–1580)
“In public buildings set aside for the care and maintenance of the goods of the middle ages, a staff of civil service art attendants praise all the dead, irrelevant scribblings and scrawlings that, at best, have only historical interest for idiots and layabouts.”
—George Grosz (1893–1959)