D. H. Turner, Date of Birth, Date of Death

D. H. Turner

English museum curator and art historian who specialised in liturgical studies and illuminated manuscripts

Date of Birth: 15-May-1931

Date of Death: 01-Aug-1985

Profession: scientist, librarian

Nationality: United Kingdom

Zodiac Sign: Taurus

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 working at a hospital and living 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 documents.
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 loan several medieval manuscripts for the first time in half a millennium.
Through his work the Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander returned to Bulgaria for the first time since the 1300s, and the Moutier-Grandval Bible returned to Switzerland, its home throughout the Middle Ages.