I received the following letter in reply to my e-mail to the
director. I think it makes the whole situation quite clear.
Thank you for your email to the Director.
The press coverage is misleading, because the Trustees of the V&A have
not yet made a decision.
One option is to close the building, but others would include a
different mix of activities in the building.
The Theatre Museum has had no success in raising the capital money for
redevelopment of its current premises (which it rents, not owns) and
the feedback from potential public and private donors is that the funds
needed to transform the Theatre Museum's building in Covent Garden
would not repay the investment given the limitations of the building.
Given the serious limitations of the building we are looking at the
feasibility of achieving greater appreciation of the collections without
continuing with the building.
If we had no Covent Garden building we would be looking at:
1. having a permanent display about the collections at the main
building in South Kensington
2. running education programmes in our new Education Centre
3. large and smaller scale exhibitions at the main museum building
4. more touring exhibitions (in the UK and abroad)
5. more partnerships with major theatre organisations in the UK
6. Much greater investment in digitising the collection and providing
web access and education material. Visits to the Theatre Museum website
have been growing rapidly.
It is worth remembering that the displays at Covent Garden represent a
very tiny fraction of the collections. The core study collection moved
in 2005 to Blythe House (our storage and research centre in west london)
where it was united with the reserve collection - This move has been
very successful and the study room there provides much better access.
Interestingly, most of the emails we have had so far are mainly
concerned about the preservation of the archives and we are also very
concerned to increase access (eg. through extended opening hours at
Blythe House and greater web access to the collections).
Ian Blatchford
Deputy Director
Suzi
----------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Piaggi Fashion-ology
Sponsored by Topshop
2 Feb ? 23 April 2006 at V&A South Kensington
Book now on 0870 906 3883 or www.vam.ac.uk
Unleashing Britain: 10 Years that Shaped the Nation 1955-1964
30 November 2005 ? 30 June 2007 at V&A Theatre Museum
Admission free
V&A Museum of Childhood temporarily closed for exciting redevelopment
Reopening autumn 2006. See the V&A website for details
Keep in touch ? visit www.vam.ac.uk and sign up for our regular e-newsletter
-----------------------------------------------------------------
The information contained in this message is confidential and intended only
for the individual named above. If you are not the intended
recipient, or responsible for delivering it to the intended
recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination,
distribution, copying, or disclosure of this information is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this
communication in error, please notify us by telephone on 020 7942
2000. This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider
MailControl - www.blackspider.com
_______________________________________________
h-costume mailing list
h-costume@mail.indra.com
http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
