D. H. Turner | |
|---|---|
 Turner escorting Queen Elizabeth II around the exhibition "The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art" in 1985 | |
| Born | Derek Howard Turner 15 May 1931 |
| Died | 1 August 1985 (aged 54) |
| Nationality | English |
| Occupation(s) | Curator; art historian |
| Years active | 1956–1985 |
| Known for | Studies of liturgy and illuminated manuscripts |
Derek Howard Turner (15 May 1931 – 1 August 1985) was an English museum curator and art historian who specialised in liturgical studies and illuminated manuscripts. He worked at the British Museum and the British Library from 1956 until his death, focusing on exhibitions, scholarship, and loans.
Following several years spent at a hospital and at an Anglican Benedictine abbey, Turner found employment in the British Museum's Department of Manuscripts at the age of 25. Serving first as assistant keeper, and later as deputy keeper, within two years of his hiring he helped the museum select manuscripts for purchase from the Dyson Perrins collection and organised his first exhibition; in the 1960s he also took teaching posts at the Universities of Cambridge and East Anglia.
Turner moved to the British Library when custodianship of the museum's library elements changed in 1973. At the library, he helped oversee several major exhibitions, and organise the international loans of significant works. He was closely involved with the lending of a copy of Magna Carta for the 1976 United States Bicentennial celebrations, and in succeeding years helped arrange the loans of several medieval manuscripts for the first time in half a millennium. Two such loans sent the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander to Bulgaria for the first time since the 1300s, and the Moutier-Grandval Bible to Switzerland, its home throughout the Middle Ages.