Margaret Emilia Gardiner OBE (22 April 1904 – 2 January 2005)[1] was a radical modern British patron of artists and resident of Hampstead, London, from 1932, where she was also a left wing political activist.

At Cambridge she fell in love with Bernard Deacon, a scholar at Trinity but was shattered when he died from blackwater fever whilst working on Malakula in the New Hebrides, Vanuatu in 1927 at the age of 24.

John Desmond Bernal had married Agnes Eileen Sprague, a secretary, on 21 June 1922, the day after being awarded his BA degree when he was aged 21.

In the 1970 general election Ben Whitaker, Labour MP for Hampstead, lost his seat as a result of a far-left candidate standing whom Gardiner had financed.

One of the works there is "Curved Form (Trevalgan)" by her longtime friend Barbara Hepworth in 1956 which Gardiner kept on display in her back garden in Hampstead.

She gave 67 works of art to the people of Orkney and "Curved Form" now sits outside on the centre's pier on the original plinth from Gardiner's garden.