“Art and design for all”: communist civil servants and museum service

Conference abstract: "While interviewing a retired senior curator from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, I was surprised to discover that she had been travelling to and making acquisitions in Czechoslovakia and Poland in the late 1940s, countries which were then firmly behind the Iron Curtain. This was especially curious because at the time, the Museum was administered by the Department of Education and its staff were, therefore, government civil servants. Was it difficult to travel to these countries, I asked her. ‘Not’, she replied, ‘if you were a Communist!’ How was it possible for a British government civil servant to be a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain? As this and other interviews revealed, this was not an incompatible state of affairs and indeed fed into an ethos of public service. Focusing on the period 1947-1956, this presentation will explore how oral histories led to uncovering of the ideals of communist curators at the Victoria & Albert Museum. It will explore how communism and a passion for art enabled individuals, especially women, to challenge the conventions of their gender and class through their work at the Museum. It will show how their democratic values shaped their scholarly and curatorial concerns to resolve the paradox of the communist civil servant."