By Christopher Woodward, Director
We were very sad at the unexpected death of our Trustee, Alex Fortescue last month. Alex was a neighbour of the Museum in London; he also lived in Surrey where he and his wife, a garden designer, were reviving a garden which had been first laid out by an Edwardian musician.
He joined the Board last year. Alex, who was 55, worked in private equity as Managing Partner of Epiris – and was a star of the profession – but even at a first meeting he could switch from, say, the future of Bonham’s, one investment, to how interesting it was to study the original design drawings of that garden in Surrey.
The expectation, of course, was for Alex to apply that expertise to our business planning. We are one of a small minority of Britain’s 1,800 Accredited Museums to have been established without either public funding or an institutional backer, a rich founder or an Endowment; within this we are one of a very small minority – I can think of one other in London – to couple that funding reality with delivering a programme of national resonance and local depth (in our case, that is, a programme of original exhibitions; a national archive of garden design, with two Archivists; a learning team of four welcoming more than two hundred schools and community groups each year). We can do this because of diverse income streams: tickets, donations, Friends’ subscriptions, garden visits, cafe and venue hire. Alex was very rare in that he understood each activity but, also, the emotional alchemy of how they fuse together. I suppose that you are only successful in building businesses as varied as auction houses to restaurants if you get inside the skin of each one. And that’s the first ask of a Museum team member to a Trustee: that they understand what you do.
But catch-ups with Alex quickly reached beyond the numbers, from the place of Lambeth Green (the new park we are making) to the design of new buildings. A brief, unpretentious observation – or a question put with a mischievous smile – would reverberate, and gain weight, as you cycled away.
Alex studied engineering at Imperial College, cycled, dived and sailed, crossing the Atlantic with his wife and three adult children. It is very hard to conceive of how a person of such boyish, triumphant energy – and of such zest for the world – is not there to talk about future plans; for his family, then, an unimaginable loss. I had only just got to know Alex but liked him a lot. How much we would have gained from him as a companion on the next ascent.