| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Proposed closure of Wandsworth Museum | |
| Posted by: | Lucille Grant | |
| Date/Time: | 11/03/07 17:07:00 |
| Malcolm, I must be extremely thick. I do not understand what you mean by using '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.' This comment is from the person whose direct remit includes the Museum, the one major community arts asset we have in the Borough (BAC is a performing arts asset, so offers soemthing entirely different), who never visited the Museum until the day its future was to be decided. When I used to work for a major retailer this would be tantamount to a Director deciding to close a department down because he personally never bought anything from it, didn't understand the product and therefore, whatever the service and sales figures decreed, it wasn't worth displaying in the store. From your post you seem to have only an appreciation of the performing arts (as you use analogies of opera and plays) and none of history and passive art in the form of museum exhibits. Many people appreciate both and one should never be sacrificed for the other. Personally I would feel a Putney person only, and have no sense of belonging to the wider borough of Wandsworth, if my so-called Borough Museum was to illustrate a few artefacts specific to Putney in Putney Library. You cannot tell the whole story the way you propose, just as I assume Wagner doesn't tell the whole story of The Ring through the individual operas that make up the whole. Sorry, I've not heard them all - opera not being my musical preference. Schools in the Borough, in order to educate children, need a wider picture available than that proposed to be displayed in their nearest town centre library. What do you mean by 'culture in the community rather than for the elite'? As you will have seen from Cedric Peachey's latest post, research shows that more DE visitors visited the Museum (35%) than ABs (22%) when the research was undertaken. Even adding ABs and C1s together (45%), they are less than C2s and DEs together (55%). |