Why must a Bradford museum lose its treasures to London?
February 2, 2016 | In the PressFrom The Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/01/bradford-museum-london-royal-photography-society-national-media-museum)
For the past few years, for a change, there has been some good news coming out of Bradford. The notorious Bradford Wastefield, a huge demolition site that disfigured the city centre for more than a decade, has at last been built over. The beautiful Bradford Odeon cinema has been spared the wrecking balland is awaiting development. The renowned National Media Museum hasescaped the threat of closure, significantly increased its footfall and secured some new funding.
It’s depressing, then, to have to focus on bad news. Especially depressing because this is an announcement that has significance not just for a once great and now struggling city, but for anyone who cares about the United Kingdom functioning as an entire nation, rather than allowing it to subside into a series of wastelands around the inaccessible citadel of London.
This weekend the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and Bradford’s National Media Museum quietly put out a press release explaining that the Royal Photography Society’s world-renowned collection was moving from the National Media Museum, its home since 2003, to the V&A.
The National Media Museum is not closing. It will now, as the press release puts it “focus on the science, technology and culture of light and sound and will retain material relevant to that”. But as local MP Judith Cummins suggests, this looks like the thin end of the wedge, another paring down of Bradford’s resources “by stealth”, and a serious blow to the long-term prospects of the National Media Museum. She says: “It was just over three months ago that I received assurances from the government both about keeping the museum here in Bradford and importantly keeping the entry free. Visitor numbers have been rising so to now learn that an important collection, which is 10% of the collection as a whole, is to be shipped off to London starts alarm bells ringing.”
Michael Pritchard, the director general of the Royal Photographic Society, also says the move is “disappointing”, but there were serious practical considerations behind the decision: “The move of the RPS Collection to London from Bradford will increase accessibility in both a geographical sense and through the resources that the V&A is able to bring ensure public and research access. The Media Museum has suffered declining staff and funding cuts over recent years which has impacted on public access to the collection despite the very best efforts of the curatorial staff.”
Let me put that in a less diplomatic way. A museum in Yorkshire cannot afford to curate this collection as well as everyone might wish. A museum in London can. Therefore a world-class institution in a northern city is going to have to give up some of its biggest treasures because it doesn’t have sufficient funding – but the magic porridge pot in the capital somehow keeps on giving.
This is significant for a fine institution. As Colin Ford – the first director of the museum – says, the plan was always that “the Royal Photographic Society collection should be at the heart of the collection”. But this move also has troubling implications outside of the world of photography, as Ford points out: “When we set up it was government policy to put things like that outside London – and it’s supposed to be government policy now isn’t it? The ‘northern powerhouse’. But what we’ve really found is that metropolitanism is triumphing again.”
Do people in London get more from seeing exhibitions? Are their opinions more important? I can see something in the idea that placing the collection in the V&A may make life easier for – say – visiting scholars, but then again are there not plenty of train and airport connections to Bradford? Are not hotel rooms and everything else to do with the cost of living significantly cheaper in Yorkshire than in London? Given that most students can now barely afford to live in the capital, who exactly benefits from moving more resources there?
It’s also not as if there isn’t already significant academic life centred around the National Media Museum in Yorkshire. “It’s important that we have a collection on our doorstep,” says Casey Orr, a local photographer and academic at nearby Leeds Metropolitan university. “There’s a huge problem in education in the north. We always struggle to keep hold of funding and losing this collection is a massive blow. Our kids need this. Our communities need this.”
Are we to suppose that those communities are of less value than those in London? How else are we to read such an assault on the prestige of Bradford?
