Michael Kauffmann, who has died aged 92, was a former director of the Courtauld Institute, a college of the University of London specialising in the study of history of art, conservation and curating, which also has an important collection, especially of French Impressionist paintings. He was a man with rare gifts. When he embarked on his career in the 1950s, he could hardly have foreseen that it would culminate three decades later in two heroic removal jobs – the installation of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s paintings, prints and drawings in the refurbished Henry Cole Wing, followed by the even trickier manoeuvring of 30 academics (not to mention a great collection and more than 200 students) into the Courtauld’s new premises at Somerset House in 1989.
The fact that Kauffmann, who was a curator at the V&A before becoming the Courtauld’s director, performed these tasks so efficiently, and with such spectacular results, is all the more remarkable given that he was primarily not an administrator but a scholar.
