After 33 years of service, Sydney Pavière, white-haired and three years beyond the usual retirement age, stood before the Art Gallery Committee. He was there to announce his retirement from his post of art director and curator at the Harris Museum and Art Gallery. Addressing the committee, and speaking with obvious affection and sincerity, he said: ‘Gentlemen we have built a monument here. Please see that nothing is done to despoil it’ (Rushton 1959, 33).

It sometimes happens that the character, as well as the actions, of a particular curator casts a long shadow within a museum or gallery. In the second quarter of the 20th century, a number of curators brought foresight, good judgement and individualism to their work. Lawrence Haward, appointed director of Manchester Art Gallery in 1914; Vincent Galloway, appointed curator at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull in 1929; and Peter Floud, who joined the V&A's circulation department in 1935, emerged to establish unique and strong identities for their museums and collections. It is possible to identify an emergence of curators in national and provincial museums, working in the interwar and immediate post-war period, who had a breadth of vision for the collections in their care. Pioneering young creative museum and gallery curators, sometimes with an artistic background (both Galloway and Pavière were painters), were playing an important role not only within their institutions but also in the continuing development of the museum profession, a factor for those curators wishing to exercise within their role a significant degree of individual agency.