In the mid-1980s Sir Roy Strong not only brought in Michael and Patty Hopkins to reconfigure the interiors of the V&A in London, but also set up a committee to address how its collections should be arranged. Dame Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, keeper of the National Art Library at the V&A, believed in radical re-configuration, argued for the committee’s report persuasively to the trustees and went on to see the developments through.
Thus, though she had entered the V&A as a librarian, by the time she applied for the directorship she had played a central role in the museum’s rethinking of how its collections should be interpreted and displayed.
