WITH regards to North Somerset's plans for its museum; we feel it is important to challenge the council's arguments for closure and moving some of the display to a touristic site on the seafront.
WITH regards to North Somerset's plans for its museum; we feel it is important to challenge the council's arguments for closure and moving some of the display to a touristic site on the seafront.
The museum does not have a simple display function. It has been created, gradually, painstakingly, by preceding generations with a wide variety of treasures given for care in perpetuity. It has research and educational functions which require continuity - groups of children from more than 120 schools have visited over the past year. A community the size of North Somerset has a duty of care, and a responsibility to protect, for future generations, what has been handed down to it.
Touring exhibitions are formidably expensive to transport, man and maintain. Much of the museum's collection is fragile and vulnerable; it would be unrealistic for it to be moved around the district without putting it at risk. Security would be difficult and costly. Don't get us wrong; well handled, travelling exhibitions might be a good thing - they just aren't a way of saving money!
Given the sudden vulnerability of the present museum (in a listed building), it's not difficult to imagine how much easier it would be for a future administration to disband a few display cabinets on the seafront and an unregarded storage shed.
Have no doubt; if the Burlington Street Museum is dissembled and lost, it will be lost for ever.
ROSIE AND HOWARD SMITH
Stafford Place
Weston
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