Backlash as Wallace Collection considers closing library to public
More than 10,000 individuals have signed a petition calling on the administration of London’s historic Wallace Collection to reject proposals to shut its library and archive to the public.
The active petition was launched by archivists and commerce unionists working with workers on the Wallace Collection, in response to senior administration’s choice to put the closure to an inside session, which ends on 11 February. The petition claims that administration needs to give attention to “income generation”, and they don’t “view the library and archive as part of this”. If the library is closed to the public, two workers members can be made redundant.
Built over the 18th and nineteenth centuries by the Marquesses of Hertford and Sir Richard Wallace, the Wallace Collection was bequeathed to the nation in 1897. Containing treasured work together with Frans Hals’s The Laughing Cavalier, Diego Velázquez’s The Lady with a Fan and Nicolas Poussin’s A Dance to the Music of Time, it’s seen as one of many world’s most interesting collections of artwork, armoury, furnishings and porcelain. The assortment’s library and archives comprise materials on its holdings.
The petition additionally questions the legality of a public physique closing the library and archive to basic use, underneath the 1958 Public Records Act. On its web site, the gathering’s statement of purpose consists of an goal to “maintain and develop the quality of scholarship and practical skills of the curatorial, collections management, conservation, education, library and archival staff”.
“The collection’s management have not answered our queries adequately, and yet they are rushing to close the archive and library – they are running a consultation which lasts until only 11 February. If they get their way then the archive and library staff will be given only three months’ notice before the service is permanently closed,” says the petition.
The plans “threaten even the ability of the public to consult the library and archive catalogues”, say the archivists, which raises questions over grants obtained, all of which “were given on the condition of the collection’s rich library and archival collections being accessible to the public”.
A spokesperson for the Wallace Collection confirmed that it was “currently in an internal consultation about some proposed changes to the library and archive which would potentially impact two members of staff. Further details will be released if the proposal goes ahead following consultation.”
Two years in the past, it was introduced that the Wallace Collection would permit loans to different museums for the primary time in 119 years. At the time, director Xavier Bray referred to as the change “a major new chapter”, saying: “For me it is a bit like The Hobbit and you see that dragon just sitting on the treasure, not letting anybody get close to it.”
