Editing Kenneth Clark (section)

===Early career===
[[File:Leonardo da Vinci - Head of Leda - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|[[Leonardo da Vinci]]: ''Head of [[Leda and the Swan (Leonardo)|Leda]]'', in the [[Royal Collection]]|upright]]
In 1929, as a result of his work with Berenson, Clark was asked to catalogue the extensive collection of [[Leonardo da Vinci]] drawings at [[Windsor Castle]]. That year he was the joint organiser of an exhibition of Italian painting which opened at the Royal Academy on 1 January 1930. He and his co-organiser [[David Lindsay, 28th Earl of Crawford|Lord Balniel]] secured masterpieces never seen before outside Italy, many of them from private collections.<ref name="dictionary">[http://arthistorians.info/clarkk "Clark, Sir Kenneth MacKenzie"] [sic], ''Dictionary of Art Historians'', retrieved 18 June 2017 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180331104156/http://arthistorians.info/clarkk|date=31 March 2018}}</ref> The exhibition covered Italian art "from [[Cimabue]] to [[Giovanni Segantini|Segantini]]" – from the mid-thirteenth to the late-nineteenth century.<ref>"Italian Art Exhibition", ''The Times'', 4 October 1929, p. 12</ref> It was greeted with public and critical acclaim, and raised Clark's profile, but he came to regret the propaganda value derived from the exhibition by the Italian dictator [[Benito Mussolini]] who had been instrumental in making so many sought-after paintings available.<ref>Stourton, p. 72</ref> Several senior figures in the British art world disapproved of the exhibition; Bell was among them, but nevertheless he continued to regard Clark as his favoured successor at the Ashmolean.<ref>Stourton, pp. 80–81</ref>

Clark was not convinced that his future lay in administration; he enjoyed writing, and would have preferred to be a scholar rather than a museum director.<ref>Clark (1974), p. 201</ref> Nonetheless, when Bell retired in 1931 Clark agreed to succeed him as Keeper of the Fine Art Department at the Ashmolean. Over the next two years Clark oversaw the building of an extension to the museum to provide a better space for his department.<ref>"Term Opens at Oxford", ''The Observer'', 1 October 1933, p. 24</ref> The development was made possible by an anonymous benefactor, subsequently revealed as Clark himself.<ref>"Ashmolean Museum: Lord Halifax Opens New Gallery", ''The Observer'',  3 June 1934, p. 24</ref> His acquisitions while at the Ashmolean included a large piece of mid-19th-century furniture known as the [[Great Bookcase]]. Victorian art and architecture were out of fashion in the 1930s, "generally despised and derided", according to the art historian Matthew Winterbottom,<ref name=mw>Winterbottom, Matthew. [https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:6e33d517-c8dd-4ba7-a69c-006d7e84f0e9/files/mb0197b61cf2125e80749d57fdda6fec7 "Not Acceptable to Present Taste"], ''Decorative Arts Society Journal'', 2017, pp. 15–16</ref>{{refn|Clark's Oxford contemporary, [[Osbert Lancaster]], quoted with approval [[P. G. Wodehouse]]'s 1937 dictum, "Whatever may be said in favour of the Victorians, it is pretty generally admitted that few of them were to be trusted within reach of a trowel and a pile of bricks".<ref>Lancaster, p. 64</ref>|group=n}} but Clark believed that they should be represented in the collection, although the bookcase was not put on display until 2016.<ref name=mw/> A later curator of the museum wrote that Clark would be remembered for his time there, "when, with his characteristic mixture of arrogance and energy, he transformed both the collections and their display."<ref>Harrison, Colin. "Kenneth Clark at the Ashmolean", ''The Ashmolean'', Spring 2006, ''quoted'' in Stourton, p. 83</ref>