by Jon Lackman | 22 March 2010 | Museums
From Timesonline.co.uk:
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 [Lionel Lambourne] first and foremost … As the [V&A's] unofficial “curator of silly art”, his range of knowledge was unrivalled, embracing so much that was customarily overlooked or dismissed as mere “popular art” … [In recent years, he produced] 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 … 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.
