Joan Evans (art historian)

Dame Joan Evans, DBE FSA (22 June 1893 – 14 July 1977) was a British historian of French and English mediaeval art, especially Early Modern and medieval jewellery. Her notable collection was bequeathed to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Joan Evans was born at Nash Mills, Apsley, Hertfordshire, the daughter of antiquarian and businessman Sir John Evans and his third wife, Maria Millington Lathbury (1856–1944). She was half-sister to Sir Arthur Evans, excavator of Knossos and discoverer of Minoan civilisation. Sir Arthur was forty two years her senior: he caused huge hilarity at an antiquarian conference of learned and erudite gentlemen when he brought in a four-year-old Joan to be "shown off".

Evans was educated privately before going up to St Hugh's College, Oxford to read Archaeology. She graduated in 1916 as M.A.. In 1930 she was awarded a D.Litt..

The Royal Institution of Great Britain's records suggest that Evans was the first ever female at the Institution to deliver, on 8 June 1923, a Friday Evening Discourse which she entitled 'Jewels of the Renaissance'.

In 1950, her book Cluniac Art of the Romanesque Period, which concerned art and sculptures made by the monks of the abbey at Cluny in eastern France, was published by Cambridge University Press.

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