Roger Took

Roger F. Took
Died	29 July 2011 Ealing
Cause of death	Suicide
Nationality	English
Education	Sandhurst, the Courtauld Institute
Occupation	Art historian, curator, writer
Known for	Paedophilia
Home town	Kent

Roger F. Took was an art historian, museum curator, author and convicted child sex offender who lived in London, Ireland, and Russia. In the course of his career, he ran several museums in England, was a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and a former director of the Barbican Art Gallery. He attended Sandhurst and the Courtauld Institute. He married in 1983, and in 1985 founded Artangel, an institution within the field of contemporary art. In December 2003, Running with Reindeer: Encounters in Russian Lapland, Roger Took's detailed description of life on Russia's Lapland and Kola Peninsula, was published in hardback. This book was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Took was most recently acclaimed as an expert on the mediaeval Russian fur trade.

In April 2007, Took was arrested for paedophilia-related crimes, and in February 2008 was jailed for a minimum of four and a half years as part of an indeterminate sentence for 17 crimes relating to child abuse.

In 1985, Roger Took founded Artangel, a London-based arts organisation that commissions work ranging from sculpture to film from international artists. It was taken over by James Lingwood and Michael Morris in 1991.

Following his departure from Artangel in 1992, Took began his trips to Kola Peninsula in Russian Lapland because there was little known about the area. He prepared by taking a crash course in Russian and getting some arms training. He studied maps and the history of the area, people and Soviet occupation. Over the years he became fluent in Russian and began to use a Cyrillic keyboard.

In December 2003, Running with Reindeer: Encounters in Russian Lapland was published in hardback. Written in a travelogue style, Took begins the book detailing the events of his first trip to Murmansk (often referred to as Russia's Lapland) as the first traveler to the area in 70 years, and later details of the interior of the region. He explains the desolation of post-Soviet north villages and the details of everyday life there of both the indigenous and non-indigenous settlers, expressing a "combination of respect and shock at their dismal lifestyle." Breaking the law, Took ventured into restricted areas, often getting caught, in order to give the reader an understanding of this vanishing native culture, its endangered ecosystem, and the dynamics of its cultures.

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