| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Proposed closure of Wandsworth Museum | |
| Posted by: | Malcolm Grimston | |
| Date/Time: | 11/03/07 14:13:00 |
| Actually, our intention is to use the existing sense of place to pull people in to viewing Wandsworth as a wider community in a way the Museum fails to do for the vast majority. But even ignoring that, if I understand your point, one cannot understand the culture of Nine Elms without it being in the context of Earlsfield and Roehampton (but not Clapham, Vauxhall or Kennington which are outside the London Borough of Wandsworth); it is meaningless to feel one belongs to Tooting without also feeling that one belongs to Southfields and Queenstown (but not Collier's Wood or Streatham); that one cannot feel a Putney person unless one knows the heritage of Battersea and Furzedown (but not Fulham or Sheen)? That a performance of Siegfried (like last night's on BBC2) cannot be appreciated in the absence of the rest of the Ring, or Ständchen without the rest of Schwanengesang? Table Number 7 without Table By The Window (I've actually acted in such a performance and it did not seem to meet with much antagonism)? That it is cultural vandalism to perform Vltava without the rest of Ma Vlast, or to sing only the first verse of the National Anthem? That we should ignore The Apostles and The Kingdom because EE did not complete the trilogy? It is an interesting case you make but I do not personally agree - there is rarely a self-evident cultural 'bite', above or below the size of which things are meaningless. If one is interested in culture in the community rather than for the elite, one should, in my view, be looking for the most likely way one can get people interested in a way that means something to them and then seek to build on it. Many a choral singer (myself included) started with Hallelujah and only later progressed to the rest of Messiah. |