%0 Journal Article
%T Contexts for photography collections at the National Media Museum
%A Michael Terwey
%D 2017
%V Special Issue: Sound and Vision
%N Spring 2017
%X 
%Z http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/arts/design/16muse.html
%Z http://www.artstor.org/content/metropolitan-museum-art-brooklyn-museum-costumes
%Z Founded in 1983 as the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, the museum was renamed as the National Media Museum in 2006. A further rebranding exercise in 2017 has resulted in the museum being renamed as the National Science and Media Museum. In this paper I will use the title National Media Museum, as this was the name of the museum during the controversy of 2016.

%Z The petition was hosted by the campaign platform 38 Degrees, https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-the-cultural-asset-stripping-of-bradford-s-national-media-museum, and started by London-based travel writer Neville Walker. The petition stated: ‘Stop the relocation of the Royal Photography Society’s collection from Bradford to London. This is pure asset stripping, will endanger the long-term viability of the Bradford museum and further concentrate the nation’s cultural treasures in an already grotesquely bloated capital.’

%Z http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/my-message-to-bradford/ (accessed 28 February 2017)

%Z https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/21/national-media-museum-bradford-vandalism-fresh-start (accessed 28 February 2017)

%Z Including the National Photography Symposium organised by Redeye in Derby in April, and the Museums Association conference in Glasgow in November.

%Z Front Row, 10 March 2016

%Z Anonymous comment, http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/my-message-to-bradford/, 10:16 am, 4 February

%Z Internal document, National Media Museum Collecting Policy Statement, March 2010.

%Z Martin Parr, quoted in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/photography-deserves-a-new-home/

%Z http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/my-message-to-bradford/
%Z Ahnaalistae, twitter, March

%Z @fransongs, 12:31 pm, 1 February 2016

%Z @rogknowlbroker, 10:40 pm 4 February 2016

%Z One can make a good argument that science and technology education and learning has received significantly more attention than arts under successive recent governments. But one would also be right in arguing that the UK’s science and technology heritage is much less well funded than our art museums and cultural institutions dedicated to the arts.

%Z https://francishodgson.com/2016/04/02/luke-161-162/ (accessed 20 February 2017)

%Z https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/06/opposition-grows-to-bradford-photography-collection-move (accessed 20 February 2017)

%Z Front Row, 10 March 2016

%Z Twitter user @Holgate (Nick Sweeny), March 2016

%Z Twitter user @Wrighty496, 11:37, 21 March 2016

%Z http://www.gpsculture.co.uk/downloads/rocc/Executive%20Summary.pdf (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z The group that ‘represents the leaders of the UK’s national collections and major regional museums’ (http://www.nationalmuseums.org.uk/) (accessed 30 January 2017)

%Z op. cit.

%Z Particularly the 2007 update which removed the ‘presumption against disposal’.

%Z Ibid. p.7

%Z Ibid. p.17

%Z “£1 billion a year in grants adds a quarter of a trillion pounds to our economy – not a bad return. So deep cuts in the small budget of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport are a false economy. Its core administration budget will fall by 20%, but I am increasing the cash that will go to the Arts Council, our national museums and galleries.” https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-george-osbornes-spending-review-and-autumn-statement-2015-speech (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/31082016-last-ditch-attempt-to-save-lancashire-museums
%Z http://www.ilkleygazette.co.uk/news/14409872.Council_funding_ruled_out_for_Ilkley_Manor_House__rescue_package_/

%Z http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/museums-slash-staff-and-opening-hours-after-devastating-cuts-2317077.html
%Z http://www.yorkmix.com/things-to-do/art/york-art-gallery-to-charge-adults-7-50-entry-fee-when-it-reopens/
%Z http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/03/the-history-behind-bradfords-loss-of-the-royal-photography-society-archive/
%Z https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/06/opposition-grows-to-bradford-photography-collection-move. As well as Ford, the letter was signed by 15 former members of staff, plus photographers Martin Parr, Don McCullin and Daniel Meadows, and actors Timothy West and Prunella Scales.

%Z John Wilson (Presenter): “The other issue, which museums all over the country are struggling with is money, and the National Media Museum in Bradford has suffered a thirty per cent cut, so clearly that’s coming into play as well. And they’re not saying how they’re saving money and whether or not that is one of the issues, do you think that is the case though?”
Ford: “Oh I think it’s got to be. And one has to be fair, you know museums are suffering. This government does not give lots and lots of money to museums, they’re all suffering cuts. The director of the Science Museum three years ago said if the government keeps cutting my funding I will not go on running four second rate museums, Bradford will close because it has the least visitors, and costs the most per taxpayer. Well sorry, but in the early days of the Museum it not only got more visitors than any museum outside London, it beat every museum except the top five in London.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072hlwg
%Z Such as the petition organised by Bradford South MP Judith Cummings https://www.change.org/p/ed-vaizey-mp-minister-of-state-for-culture-and-the-digital-economy-the-royal-photography-society-s-world-renowned-collection-must-remain-in-bradford.

%Z http://blog.nationalmediamuseum.org.uk/my-message-to-bradford/
%Z Established in Bradford in 1983. One of the earliest non-London national museums.

%Z The Trustees of the Science Museum

%Z The Science Museum in South Kensington; the Blythe House storage facility in West London; the storage facility at Wroughton in Wiltshire; The National Railway Museum in York; The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester; Locomotion at Shildon in County Durham; and the National Media Museum in Bradford

%Z Within the department of Chemistry, with the acquisition of equipment developed by British film pioneer Robert W Paul.

%Z As is also the case for the other parts of the Science Museum Group, including the National Railway Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

%Z Front Row, 10 March 2016, Ford: “In my day, and for some years after I left, on the front door of the Museum it said this is a museum about the art and science of photography.”

%Z It is noticeable that the first section of Ben Burbridge and Greg Hobson’s exhibition Revelations: Experiments in Photography was very largely composed of photography that had been categorised as ‘Science Museum Photographs’, in other words, material explicitly excluded in 1983 from the ‘National Photography Collection’.

%Z http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/05/from-the-archive-4-march-1982-national-media-museum/ (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z National Media Museum Collecting Policy Statement, 2010, p 1

%Z http://photos.bradfordmuseums.org/view-item?i=191&WINID=1486638410045 (accessed 9 Feb 2017)

%Z Wilson is the former chair of the National Media Museum Advisory Board, a former Trustee of the Science Museum and a significant collector of historic and contemporary art photography. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/feb/28/photography-collectors-michael-g-wilson-harriet-logan

%Z http://www.rps.org/about/history/collection (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z Professor Raymond Clarke, writing in the RPS Journal Vol. 139, July/August 1999, ‘…the capital investment implications of the core business (Membership Services) are minimal in comparison with those financial resources necessary to manage properly the collection…’, p 252

%Z Including radio, new media, web, advertising, news, digital art and games as well as photography, film and television.

%Z National Media Museum Collecting Policy, 2010–14

%Z This collection of approximately 40,000 adverts had been accumulated at the Museum in the 1990s at a time when the BFI were not interested in collecting such material.

%Z ‘The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (its name until the ill-judged change in 2006) began assembling its world-ranking collection 33 years ago.’ https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/06/opposition-grows-to-bradford-photography-collection-move (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z https://francishodgson.com/2016/04/02/luke-161-162/ (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/03/the-history-behind-bradfords-loss-of-the-royal-photography-society-archive/2/ (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z The open letter in the Observer of 6 March focused heavily on this argument, as did Colin Ford when interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row on 10 March.

%Z At the 2016 National Photography Symposium, Colin Ford recounted the circumstances around the establishment of the Museum: a college-friend in the civil service suggested a new national museum of photography could only be established as part of an existing institution; the Science Museum had recently opened the National Railway Museum in York in 1975; the Museums Association conference was held in Bradford in 1977 and the then director of the Science Museum Dame Margaret Weston was shown the empty Wardley Theatre complex as a potential site for a new museum; film was added to the museum in response to a local councilor’s belief that an IMAX would attract tourists to the city; and then television in the belief that an income stream could be cultivated from TV broadcasters and production companies.

%Z While Bradford is seen as a dangerous place by many British people, it is in fact less so than many other large UK cities http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/people-think-bradford-britains-most-4200412 (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9069943/Ray-Honeyford.html (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9523983/The-Satanic-Verses-and-me.html (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-18232158 (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z UK Prime Minister David Cameron explicitly referred to “…towns like Bradford or Oldham” that “continue to be some of the most segregated parts of our country”. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-extremism-speech-read-the-transcript-in-full-10401948.html (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z This in spite of the representation of Yorkshire photographers like Alexander Keighly, in the RPS collection.

%Z For example: ‘…the Bradford catalogue entries…’ (https://francishodgson.com/2016/04/02/luke-161-162/); and ‘…the fact that Bradford would of course be interested in equipment…’ http://www.bjp-online.com/2016/05/from-the-archive-4-march-1982-national-media-museum/

%Z https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/18/arts/design/nancy-spector-joins-brooklyn-museum-as-chief-curator.html (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/arts/design/arnold-lehman-to-step-down-from-his-post.html (accessed 9 February 2017)

%Z https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/08/arts/design/museums-see-different-virtues-in-virtual-worlds.html
%I The Science Museum Group
%@ 2054-5770
%B eng
%U https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/contexts-for-photography/
%J Science Museum Group Journal