In November 2003 an article appeared in The Sunday Times about Pallant House Gallery, Chichester. Chichester, the county town of Sussex, is an attractive place, but in reality little more than a large village, famous for its Roman remains, its cathedral and its theatre. The latter was founded by Sir Laurence Olivier.
Between 1997 and 2003 great strides had been made in raising funds to build an extension to Pallant House. Previously, an amusing arrangement of local bric-a-brac displayed in a Pevsner-approved Queen Anne house, the plan was to accommodate in a ‘new build’ a collection of modern British art assembled by the architect, Colin StJohn-Wilson. StJohn-Wilson had become notorious as the designer of The British Library at St. Pancras. The Prince of Wales had publicly castigated this building, and, as a result, the architect’s practice was in trouble. The prospect of a new, multi-million pound commission to house his own collection was, not surprisingly, enticing.
This plan was facilitated by the appointment in 1997 of a new director of Pallant House Gallery. Stefan van Raay acquired his post following his success as curator of Glasgow Museums’ Burrell Collection. Previously he had worked for the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, but had been obliged to leave under the cloud of an illicit relationship with his boss, Mr. Ronald de Leeuw, subsequently director of the Rijksmueum. Van Raay joined forces with StJohn-Wilson and his American wife/partner, M.J. Long, to realize this project.
Fund raising and planning permission were, of course, the two major obstacles. The first was overcome primarily due to the support of Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox. Lady Nicholas, the wife of a retired diplomat and sister-in-law to the Duke of Richmond, was appointed Chairman of the Friends of Pallant House Gallery soon after Van Raay’s arrival. The pair soon bonded.
The new Chairman knew nothing about art, but she did know ‘people’ – the right people. Eventually, substantial donations were secured from among others Mr. David Hopkinson (The Priory Trust), the man behind the success of the investment managers, M&G , and The Hon. Simon Sainsbury, the leading light in the management of the Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts. The Heritage Lottery Fund coughed up the major subsidy, choosing to overlook the fact that they were in fact sponsoring the ego-trip of a discredited architect. Eventually nearly £10m was raised. A set-up job, if ever there was one. Extraordinarily, few objections were made to the HLF decision.
The second, trickier, problem of planning permission – a ‘new-build’ in an A-Listed area of a Georgian town – was overcome thanks to the ignorance of a compliant local council, dazzled by prospect of major investment in the locality. Won over by the ‘donation’ of a major art collection, the council failed to understand that StJohn-Wilson’s collection was in fact being channelled through the N.A.C.F. (National Art Collections Fund). This means that the architect’s heirs can, at some future date when they are short of funds, sell off valuable items from the architect’s ‘donation’. To be fair, the StJohn-Wilson decided to take advantage of the N.A.C.F mechanism, only once planning permission had been granted.
Meanwhile, the Pallant House Gallery director, Stefan van Raay, in spite of the onerous responsibility of meetings with the local council, The Regency Society, the Heritage Lottery Fund et al. was somehow finding time to explore the local ‘gay scene’ – such as it was. The public parks and conveniences of Chichester were well known ‘cruising grounds’. Kitchen staff from local restaurants were among his conquests. But sometime after the year 2000, having extricated himself from his joint property commitments with his long-term English partner, Van Raay picked up a 38-year-old Albanian ‘asylum seeker’. Resident in nearby Bognor Regis, Albert Prifte was in fact ‘on the run’. Having knifed a Caribbean fellow-resident of a London hostel he had been charged with Grievous Bodily Harm (G.B.H.). Almost daily food parcels were delivered. Eventually, Van Raay financed his lover’s return to Albania to faciliate his evasion of the justice system of the country that had granted him refugee status.
Sometime towards the beginning of 2003 Van Raay ‘spilt the beans’ to his close friend, Lady Nicholas Gordon Lennox and selected trustees of Pallant House Gallery. He was advised that in financing his Albanian friend’s flight, he may well have committed the offense of ‘aiding and abetting’, even though his friend was yet to be convicted. Van Raay took fright, and in September 2003 travelled to Albania in order to encourage Prifte to return to the U.K. and ‘face the music’. He excused this rather exotic excursion by telling his partner he was taking a holiday to check up on someone he’d fostered from the Pallant House Gallery ‘outreach programme’. In this he failed.
On October 3rd 2003, however, Van Raay realizing that the cat was about to leap out of the bag, and that his hitherto entirely trusting partner had become suspicious, walked out on his decade-long relationship. The very next day he flew to Italy, met up with his Albanian lover and transported him via a Dutch friend’s house in Switzerland back to Holland, where his family and friends put pressure on him to save Van Raay’s neck and return to the U.K. This ploy was successful.
- Albert Prifte was subsequently convicted and served time in H.M.P Brixton. Van Raay visited him on one occasion only, wrote him off, and proceeded to pastures new. Prifte subsequently re-offended and served a further prison sentence. He remains resident in the U.K.
- In the wake of the Sunday Times article, the Chairman of the Trustees of Pallant House Gallery denied in the pages of the Chichester Observer any wrong-doing on the part of his employee.
- Van Raay was never prosecuted for ‘aiding and abetting’ in spite of the interest expressed in this case by the local police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the local M.P., Mr. Andrew Tyrie. He remains in his post.
- In 2007 Pallant House Gallery won the Gulbenkian Prize, ‘Museum of The Year’.
- It is unknown whether or not any works from the StJohn-Wilson Collection have been ‘de-accessioned’ – yet.
- In 2009 a £4m donation from the Monument Trust (one of the Sainsbury family’s many) considerably enhanced Pallant House Gallery’s endowment fund. Stewart Grimshaw, Simon Sainsbury’s widowed civil partner, wields considerable clout on this Trust’s board.
Further information relating to this article is available at:
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1030036.ece