The Guardian view on the UK’s first centre for illustration: visual literacy, and the sheer joy of images, matter | Editorial

A new national institution, the brainchild of revered artist Sir Quentin Blake, shows this overlooked artform is finally getting the recognition it deserves

“What is the use of a book … without pictures or conversation?” the heroine of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland complains. When you think of Alice, you probably imagine John Tenniel’s 19th-century engravings. Roald Dahl’s BFG is now synonymous with Sir Quentin Blake’s big-eared giant, and the much-loved Gruffalo owes as much to Axel Scheffler’s drawings as Julia Donaldson’s rhymes. And yet illustration nearly always plays second fiddle to words. Caught between fine art and publishing, it is often overlooked as a highly skilled craft in its own right.

Hopefully, this is about to change with the opening of the first permanent home for illustration in the UK, and the largest of its kind in the world. The centre is the brainchild of 93-year-old Sir Quentin Blake, who gives it his name and huge archive of 40,000 drawings. Many wonderful creations – crocodiles, birds, babies who transform into dragons – have sprung from Blake’s imagination. This museum, in a cleverly repurposed 17th-century former waterworks in London’s Clerkenwell, will celebrate the history and future of illustration in all its guises.