Saturday 13 October 2007

William Morris: New Row

William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, LondonIn yesterday's meeting at the Greenleaf Road Baptist Church in Walthamstow, London, Waltham Forest Council outlined its plans for the future of the William Morris Gallery and Vestry House Museum. The main plan seems to be creating a Museum for Arts & Crafts at the Beaufoy Institute in Lambeth, which would display 70% of the William Morris collection from Walthamstow on a rotating basis. How this helps the William Morris Gallery remains unclear. Councillors were unable to answer pertinent questions from the floor, and today BBC TV London News reported a new row over this proposal. It really makes one wonder how on earth local councillors ever get elected to office. Click the tile link for details.

3 Comments:

At 14/10/07, Blogger Unknown said...

Hi, Tiago

I'll pay you a visit.

 
At 14/10/07, Blogger Philip said...

Thanks for update on this - it is terrible that anyone could even consider closure.

 
At 15/10/07, Blogger Unknown said...

Hi, Philip

Thanks for your comment. I've been following this mess from the start. If you type William Morris into my search box, top left corner, you'll see what I've written so far.

I was invited to a meeting to discuss ways to promote the William Morris Gallery and to attract funding, a meeting which seemed very positive. All sorts of good ideas were raised and noted down. I had no idea it would lead to this daft idea of loaning 70% of the collection to Lambeth for six months of the year. If they do that, they might as well close the gallery!

I suspect councillors have been conned, seduced by the promise of extra funding from whoever is trying to open this new Arts & Crafts Museum. For Goodness' sake, there is already an arts & crafts museum; it's called the William Morris Gallery. And it stands to lose far more than it will gain by supporting this new museum in Lambeth.

 

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