Problems for small Museums in recession
Salon IFA 227 reports closures and threats to various museums - particularly shocking is the threat to the Butchery Road museum in Canterbury.
'Further gloomy news is emerging from the museums sector, where national museums and galleries, such as the British Museum and the Royal Academy, are attracting record numbers of visitors, but smaller museums are under threat, principally from local authority spending cuts, though the diversion of Heritage Lottery Funds into the Olympics is also being blamed for a shortage of funds for the sector.
Museums are responding by reducing opening hours (Glasgow Council plans to shut five museums on Mondays to help save £60m, Bournemouth’s Russell-Cotes Art Gallery is considering winter closure to save £79,000 and Brighton’s Booth Museum of Natural History is contemplating a three-and-a-half-day week as part of the council’s £8m savings package), by selling assets (the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro is planning to sell two paintings to raise £3m), by making staff redundant, or by closing (the fate of the Peat Moors Visitors Centre, near Glastonbury, and the Lock Museum in Walsall, with the Aston Transport Museum in Birmingham also under threat of closure).
Further closures may now be inevitable. Salon has already reported on the tribulations of the Segontium Museum, near Caernarfon, and now Salon learns that Canterbury City Council is proposing to close its Roman Museum in Butchery Lane, move the exhibits elsewhere and use the space as a cafe. Such a use will fit ill with the fact that the museum is built around a scheduled monument, consisting of a fine mosaic from a Roman courtyard house excavated by our Fellow Sheppard Frere in 1945 and open to the public since 1946. Concerned Canterbury residents are asking whether Caerleon, Cirencester or Bath would close their Roman museums to save money.
Mark Taylor, director of the Museums Association, said that many museums ‘depended on public sector support’, while a Local Government Association spokesman said that local authorities faced declining income and increasing demand for services: ‘The cold wind of recession has hit councils in the last year. Undeniably difficult choices have to be made.’
'Further gloomy news is emerging from the museums sector, where national museums and galleries, such as the British Museum and the Royal Academy, are attracting record numbers of visitors, but smaller museums are under threat, principally from local authority spending cuts, though the diversion of Heritage Lottery Funds into the Olympics is also being blamed for a shortage of funds for the sector.
Museums are responding by reducing opening hours (Glasgow Council plans to shut five museums on Mondays to help save £60m, Bournemouth’s Russell-Cotes Art Gallery is considering winter closure to save £79,000 and Brighton’s Booth Museum of Natural History is contemplating a three-and-a-half-day week as part of the council’s £8m savings package), by selling assets (the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro is planning to sell two paintings to raise £3m), by making staff redundant, or by closing (the fate of the Peat Moors Visitors Centre, near Glastonbury, and the Lock Museum in Walsall, with the Aston Transport Museum in Birmingham also under threat of closure).
Further closures may now be inevitable. Salon has already reported on the tribulations of the Segontium Museum, near Caernarfon, and now Salon learns that Canterbury City Council is proposing to close its Roman Museum in Butchery Lane, move the exhibits elsewhere and use the space as a cafe. Such a use will fit ill with the fact that the museum is built around a scheduled monument, consisting of a fine mosaic from a Roman courtyard house excavated by our Fellow Sheppard Frere in 1945 and open to the public since 1946. Concerned Canterbury residents are asking whether Caerleon, Cirencester or Bath would close their Roman museums to save money.
Mark Taylor, director of the Museums Association, said that many museums ‘depended on public sector support’, while a Local Government Association spokesman said that local authorities faced declining income and increasing demand for services: ‘The cold wind of recession has hit councils in the last year. Undeniably difficult choices have to be made.’
Comments