International Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing Arts
Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle
Inaugural Address
Sir Roy Strong
The Theatre and Theatre Collections / Le théâtre et les collections de documents
International
Association of Libraries and Museums of the Performing
Arts
16th International Congress, London, 9-13 September 1985
Proceedings of the Congress
Société Internationale
des Bibliothèques et des Musées des arts du spectacle
16ème Congres Internationale, Londres, 9-13 september
1985
Procès-Verbal
London 1986, pp. 9-11
Ladies and gentlemen, it falls to me to have the privilege to inaugurate the SIBMAS Conference in London and to extend to you, on behalf of the Victoria and Albert Museum, all my colleagues in the Museum and myself, the warmest of welcomes to London; also in the hopes that the sun might vouchsafe a ray from the skies during the week that you are here, because it has been notably absent up until now.
I can assure you that the Theatre Museum, which you will see later this week in Covent Garden, is more advanced than at least one notice I read in the Sunday newspapers would have you believe. You will be able to see the main structure of it and see what an immensely exciting and imaginative place it will be, and let me assure you that it will open in 1987. We are only faced, as I am sure many of you are, with one little hitch and that is to fund-raise a further £350,000 in order to see that the building is not dragged out even more; and if anybody in the audience can put me on to someone who wishes to give me that amount of money I will be delighted to make contact with you almost immediately.
The story of how the Theatre Museum in London came to be built is, I think, a real tract for the times and I think it is being hard on a lot of people and especially hard on Alexander Schouvaloff and his colleagues who, I think, have had an extremely tough period of a decade and more. I have lived with it both as Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and, even earlier than that, when I became a member of a committee to pioneer what was to be called a Museum of the Performing Arts at the very beginning of the 1970's, or it may have been at the end of the 1960's. The Theatre Museum, as it began, was very much a 1960's concept, conceived in a period which we now look back on as one of, in many senses, misplaced optimism and, certainly, a great amount of prodigal government spending. The Victoria and Albert Museum, in the decade that's ensued since the amalgamation of the three collections that are to make up our Theatre Museum, has gone through perhaps the most difficult period in its history since it had to evacuate its collections in the Second World War. We have sustained a succession of swingeing government cuts but we have kept the flag flying. I have always personally had a great commitment to the Theatre Museum and the option to axe it was always open to me at the time, but I never took it. Now the Museum is under the governance of a board of Trustees, for the Victoria and Albert Museum ceased to be part of government, I am delighted to say, in 1984 and we now seek for ways of opening the Museum which will work in concord with maintaining all the other departments of the Museum. It seems important to remind you, because of your specialist interest, that the Theatre Museum, which is one of the jewels in our crown, is one of the jewels and that it forms a single department out of thirteen departments covering the whole realm of the decorative and applied arts, the arts of the Indian sub-continent and of Japan and China. It will shortly mature into a branch and, as such, its status will be closest to one of our most delightful outstations, the Museum of Childhood in the east end of London, rather than the three great historic houses we run at Osterley, Ham and Apsley House.
Now I note that the theme of your conference is the theatre and theatre collections. I tried yesterday afternoon to think what precisely that meant and other than coming to the conclusion that it could mean almost that you could talk about anything, I thought it gave me a vehicle to put again in a broader context what, in my view, are perhaps just two points, two crises, crises of resources, crises of ideology which apply right the way across the spectrum in relation to museums and collections. Collections certainly preoccupy me for all museums all over the world continue to go on acquiring at a rate which, certainly in this country, bears no relationship to the quantifiable resources that are there to support them. It's a point which is too easily glossed over. Alright, for a curator it's rather a dreary point. I do hope that this is a topic which you will give serious thought to this week - and discussion. There is no sign, as far as any of us can see, of an economic upturn, certainly in western Europe and few museum curators ever seem to take on board the consequences of perpetual expansion in terms of collections. Where is it supposed to lead as this concept of a museum in the main 19th century propels its way into the 21st century? More artefacts, whether they are books, paintings, scenery, pictures, sculpture, theatre programmes, video, anything, require more staff, more exhibition space, more storage, more conservation, more of absolutely, utterly everything. This will demand, and this is where I think the acumen of your minds needs to be applied, a far more discriminating attitude to what should or should not be acquired and preserved for posterity; and also, and this seems particularly applicable to this conference, a far greater liaison in terms of fields of acquisition to avoid overlap that probably exist today. Not for nothing did I shudder when the excellent and, I think, outstanding head of our Theatre Museum defined its scope once to me as "world" and "universal". The implications of that, in terms of financial resources, were truly alarming and it is, after all, me and the Trustees who will be landed with raising the funds to carry this universal collection into the next century. That's one point.
The second point, I think, is another one which is radically affecting all museums in the recessionary period which we're in. That is the pressure to be entertainment and, hence, through being entertainment, to be revenue engendering; and this, progressively, is being achieved at the expense of museums being repositories of scholarship and learning about which I feel a deep and abiding passion. I, for instance, feel that I will be the last Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum ever simultaneously to administer, fund-raise and write, as I have written up to twenty scholarly books including at least three on aspects of Renaissance theatre. I think I am the end of a line. The pressure on anything defining itself remotely as a museum of the performing arts, is there to be entertainment, must be absolutely enormous. I believe that we should strive to retain a balance. A balance is becoming very, very difficult. The Victoria and Albert has a long and proud tradition in the field of scholarship that we wish the new Theatre Museum to share and it has already, in the last few years, spread its wings and made its contributions. We hope that the new museum will be a focus for all that is most innovative in the study of the history of the performing arts, particularly in Britain. It is not a status that it can assume overnight. It is one which can only slowly be earned as the Museum's status in other fields is also being slowly achieved over a century. All museum conferences these days, therefore, have to come to grips with the ideological crises engendered by the last decade. They are the broader issues. They are the things which you must always bear in your mind when you focus down on what are subjects of passionate concern to you but which can only survive as areas of study and collection if you bear in mind the broad context in which they sit. It is a tremendous challenge to meet. It is one which I live with daily in fear and trepidation.
Well London, its
theatres, I think makes a super place for a conference. I
think you'll have a wonderful time. May your week be
immensely enjoyable. I'm sad that it is to be passed in a
physics theatre but there we are. I hope that you will
enjoy the Victoria and Albert and I certainly look
forward to meeting you all tonight, when you will see a
selection of some of our treasures of designs for scenery
and costume. It's a great collection and it's still a
collection in the making. Do enjoy yourselves and, as I
say, I will look forward to seeing you and talking to all
of you tonight at the exhibition which Alexander
Schouvaloff and his colleagues have brilliantly contrived
for this evening. And please, please come back in 1987
and onwards, and it will be there. We ought to make an
exception and let you in for nothing but I regret to tell
you, inevitably, it will have to be revenue-engendering
and you will have to pay to go in. Ladies and gentlemen,
thank you.
URL: http://www.theatrelibrary.org/sibmas/congresses/sibmas85/london85_01.html
Last updated: 27.11.2002
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