When the Duchess of opened the new Exhibition Road Quarter at the and Albert Museum on a gorgeous June day two years ago, she opted for a £1,790 black-and-white tweed minidress rather than the mid-market ensembles (Reiss, LK Bennett, Whistles) she often wears. It was an excellent choice. For this was no everyday event; it would mark the most significant (and at £54.
5 million, most expensive) refurb of the V&A for more than a century. And there was always the chance that she might be shaking hands with royalty – or at least philanthropic royalty, in the shape of the British branch of the Sackler family, who are believed to have given more than £2 million to the development. The Duchess made her way around with her customary poise, accepting a bouquet from a young well-wisher before arriving at the Sackler Courtyard.
Paved with 11,000 handmade porcelain tiles in 15 different patterns, the courtyard is the most striking feature of the new quarter. Indeed, as the Duchess entered it, she mouthed the word ‘wow’. Just as strikingly, the Sackler family name is etched tastefully on to the courtyard in a large, elegant font, and their generosity is further acknowledged with a mirrored plaque name-checking the late family patriarch, the Anglophile Mortimer Sackler, his third wife, the British-born Dame Theresa Sackler, and all seven of Mortimer’s children, three of them by Dame Theresa.
The Sacklers had triumphed once again – as they had done at the Tate, the National Galle.