Profile - Imperial War Museum Director

PROFILE SIR ROBERT CRAWFORD
A WEEK IN THE LIFE
John Kelleher

The Imperial War Museum, headquartered in South London was conceived in 1917 in the final stages of the conflict briefly known as the “war to end all wars.”

Across the century since it has chronicled innumerable conflicts around the world involving Britain and the Commonwealth.

Sir Robert Crawford, its Director General, who retires this autumn after 40 years, has spent his career gazing into the heart of this darkness - the museum’s account of the impacts of war on the lives of ordinary people.

“I think war is part of our human condition. I don’t think it will go away, but I think it is important to remain optimistic about humanity’s ability to manage this challenge. Institutions like this have a role in equipping people with an understanding of the history of war and of the historical antecedents to current conflicts that should enable them to address the challenges of war more responsibly and effectively in the future.”

Crawford, who earns £129,000 annually, joined the Museum in 1966 as a junior researcher straight from Oxford. His first job was cataloguing part of its immense film archive of the build-up to D Day and ensuing battle for Normandy.

“I told the director it would take thirty-five of me the rest of the century to complete cataloguing this material in the amount of detail that was required! We now do it in a somewhat speedier manner.”

Crawford, 63 now has others among the Museum’s 645 fulltime staff who maintain the still growing archive. Although Museum overlord, he praises his team for such achievements as creating the Holocaust exhibition, the dramatic Imperial War Museum North in Manchester, HMS Belfast, the air museums at Duxford and the Cabinet War Rooms.

But at the Museum’s core is an unswerving vision – overseen by Crawford since he became Director General in 1995. Education is its enduring raison d’etre and, despite regular debates about widening its remit, he says The Great War – the first “total war” - is still the best starting point for the collection. Suggestions it might drop Imperial from its name have also been examined frequently and rejected.

With mere months before retirement Crawford shows no sign of flagging.

Recently he was in Washington for a fund raising dinner for the American Air Museum at Duxford. “Uniquely we managed to close Reagan Airport for a flyover of three second world war aircraft.” He also attended a Downing Street reception marking the cultural world’s contribution to the economy, opened the “For Your Eyes Only” exhibition on James Bond’s creator Ian Fleming and chaired meetings about funding and the museum’s future.

From October that future will be the responsibility of the Museum’s first female director, Diane Lees, presently running London’s Museum of Childhood.

“My retirement will be a clean break. Rather like headmasters and vicars, one doesn’t offer a ghost like tread in the patch of one’s successor. I do hope though they might invite me back for an exhibition opening or two.”