Gillian Spencer obituary

<p>My former boss, the art gallery and museum director Gillian Spencer, who has died aged 95, was one of the pioneering curators in Yorkshire in the 1970s and 80s. With <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/17/frank-constantine">Frank Constantine</a> in Sheffield and Robert Rowe in Leeds, she led the renaissance of museum services in the county, brightening their local appeal with a sense of purpose, direction and style.</p><p>When appointed in 1973 to Wakefield as museums and art galleries officer, Gillian found the city’s collections crumbling in a polluted, coal-heated building that she described as “a machine to destroy the collections”. Likewise, she found the City Art Gallery, with its incomparable collection of 20th-century painting and sculpture, being run with a policy to hang pictures on the basis of “largest and lightest”.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/aug/21/gillian-spencer-obituary">Continue reading...</a>