Cecil Harcourt-Smith

Sir Cecil Harcourt-Smith KCVO (11 September 1859 – 27 March 1944) was a British archaeologist and museum director.

Born on 11 September 1859 in Staines, Middlesex, he was the second son of William Smith, solicitor, and his wife, Harriet, daughter of Frederic Harcourt, of Ipswich.

In 1908 Harcourt-Smith became chairman of a commission of the Victoria and Albert Museum, set up to look into the collections of applied art at South Kensington that had been purchased by the government after the Great Exhibition of 1851.

He raised the status of the technical staff and negotiated for them the same rank and pay as the officials of the British Museum.

It was under his directorship that the museum acquired the Salting collection, the Rodin sculptures (now transferred to the Tate Gallery), the Talbot Hughes collection of costumes, the Alma Tadema library, the Le Blon Korean pottery and the Pierpont Morgan stained glass.

He played a leading part in the foundation of the Central Committee for the Care of Churches, he was chairman of the committee of the Incorporated Church Building Society, and vice-chairman of the British Institute of Industrial Art and the British Society of Master Glass Painters.