I was saddened to hear of the death of David Hockney last week. What a talent, I love his work.

It made me reflect fondly on the very earliest days of my museum career, working at the excellent Cartwright Hall in Bradford. They have a great early work of his, showing a street scene from the 1950s that still looked so recognisable as the sort of streets we lived on in West Yorkshire in the 1990s. A world away from his later, more famous and brasher LA pictures.

Most of my early museum years were spent improving documentation, carrying out audits and updating records. I was so excited (and slightly in awe) to be tasked with auditing one of the stores at Cartwright Hall, where there was a plan chest of some of Hockney’s fax works from the 1980s (this sort of thing). As those of you a certain age will recall, fax paper was rubbish and the pictures were looking a bit the worse for wear – the paper fading and images and text really hard to make out any more.

As a diligent condition checker, I fed this back to the curator, who proceeded to phone up David Hockney, tell him and ask him what he would like to do! The answer was, ‘let them degrade and change naturally – its part of their story’. What a great response (if a bit challenging for us in museums who are used to conserving and preserving). I wonder what condition they are in now?

This memory came flooding back last week when Hockney’s death was announced, and it made me smile.