Last modified on Sun 18 Apr 2021 12.31 EDT
David Boston, who has died aged 89 of cancer, had an outstanding career in museums including 28 years as director at the Horniman Museum, whose future he helped secure when it was threatened by the abolition in 1985 of its funder, the Greater London council, by the Conservative government.
Instead of it being consigned to a local authority that he knew could not afford to maintain it, Boston won the argument to gain the Horniman direct government funding, in effect giving it national museum status.
The Horniman, which is in Forest Hill, south-east London, boasts world-class collections, including ethnographic, natural history and musical instruments, all set in glorious public gardens. It began in the drawing-room of a millionaire tea importer, Frederick Horniman, who wanted “to bring the world to Forest Hill”, then a genteel leafy Victorian suburb of large villas.