Bradford’s National Media Museum is once again reeling, with news that a 400,000-strong archive from the Royal Photographic Society collection is to be relocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London this summer.
The decision to move the collection, a treasure trove of photographs and artefacts dating from 1827 to the present day, including works by William Fox Talbot and many other pioneers of the medium, was taken by the museum’s parent body, the Science Museum Group, at a meeting of trustees in March last year, but has only now become public.
Tellingly, the trustees are recorded as acknowledging that this collection move “…might be seen as removing the ‘best’ part from Bradford…” Perhaps that’s why the decision has been kept in the dark for a year.
And the Royal Photographic Society itself has expressed “serious reservations about moving the collection from a single national museum dedicated to the history of photography”.
Centralising
The ensuing furore is predictably studded with good old provincial sour grapes, with expressions like “absolute metropolitanism” and “cultural vandalism” in plentiful supply. But there is a genuine concern here, with a move to centralise national cultural assets. Indeed, the same board minutes also discussed dropping the title “National” from the Bradford museum’s name. Apparently “Science Museum North” is an alternative under consideration.
The loss of this important archive came a few days before the museum announced that after 20 years it would no longer run the Bradford International Film Festival. The reason given was it would enable the museum to focus more on scientific and technological activity. It’s hard to see what could be more technological than the development of the photographic process and its cultural applications.
These decisions call into question the continued existence of the National Media Museum. It came close to closure as recently as 2013, when the Science Museum Group threatened to pull the plug. On that occasion it was intervention by, among others, Bradford Council which ensured the funding to give a further lease of life. But relentless funding cuts and consequent staffing reductions have conspired to restrict public access to the collection in recent years.
The expertise of the curatorial staff means that the museum is still regarded as a photographic resource second to none. But this shipping off of the crown jewels can only be seen as another nail in the coffin.