London Science Museum Models

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Anyone, like me, who has enjoyed looking at the superb ship model collections in the London Science Museum will be saddened to hear that they are to be closed in February and the models put into permanent storage. On hearing the news I contacted the Museum and received the reply below.

 

I hope to take some more photos of the models before they are effectively removed from the public gaze although they will still be available to researchers.

 

Yet another instance of the Country turning its back on its maritime heritage.

 

Colin

 

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From the Curator of Transport, London Science Museum.

Our current plans are to close the Ships galleries in early summer next year so that they can be cleared to make space for a major new permanent gallery on the history of communications opening in 2014.

The ship models, once removed, will be housed in our storage facilities in West London (near Kensington Olympia) and Wiltshire (near Swindon) and, as with all our reserve collections, will be accessible to anyone who wishes to see them for research or study by appointment (although in the case of the ship models there will be a delay of one year between their arrival in store and their accessibility for study as they acclimatise to the change in humidity and temperature in special sealed transit crates).

Owing to the breadth of the subjects we cover (across science, technology, industry, medicine and engineering), and the length of time we have been collecting (some 150 years) our collections are huge and we only have space in the museum itself to display about five to ten per cent of them. We therefore have a long-term plan to bring new collections and subjects out from storage to replace older displays. In this case, our communications collection currently in storage is highly important and the Ships galleries, installed in the early 1960s, are now the oldest unmodified gallery displays in the museum.

I do sincerely regret the disappointment caused when we close galleries, but we have to seek a balance between maintaining existing displays and creating new ones. It is a difficult balance to strike but in providing research study facilities at our stores for all our reserve collections, we do maintain public access to the collections, and hope that we can thus enable the continuing study of this heritage while offering new historic displays in the museum for our visitors.
Our current plans are to close the Ships galleries in early summer next year so that they can be cleared to make space for a major new permanent gallery on the history of communications opening in 2014.

The ship models, once removed, will be housed in our storage facilities in West London (near Kensington Olympia) and Wiltshire (near Swindon) and, as with all our reserve collections, will be accessible to anyone who wishes to see them for research or study by appointment (although in the case of the ship models there will be a delay of one year between their arrival in store and their accessibility for study as they acclimatise to the change in humidity and temperature in special sealed transit crates).

Owing to the breadth of the subjects we cover (across science, technology, industry, medicine and engineering), and the length of time we have been collecting (some 150 years) our collections are huge and we only have space in the museum itself to display about five to ten per cent of them. We therefore have a long-term plan to bring new collections and subjects out from storage to replace older displays. In this case, our communications collection currently in storage is highly important and the Ships galleries, installed in the early 1960s, are now the oldest unmodified gallery displays in the museum.

I do sincerely regret the disappointment caused when we close galleries, but we have to seek a balance between maintaining existing displays and creating new ones. It is a difficult balance to strike but in providing research study facilities at our stores for all our reserve collections, we do maintain public access to the collections, and hope that we can thus enable the continuing study of this heritage while offering new historic displays in the museum for our visitors.

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Closure of maritime galleries

[ashley needhamParticipant @ashleyneedham69188]

Cor..we were only there two weeks ago !

 

Shame they cant be moved and displayed somewhere with, say,the models from Greenwich. What a shame, there are some truly stupendous models there, both in execution and size.

 

Perhaps that some of the models could be loaned to other museums or collections to bump up the interest quotient elsewhere.

 

Ashley. PS they could instead get rid of all the boring AIRCRAFT on the floor above…..

[Don KoehlerParticipant @donkoehler51711]

Truly disappointing. More and more ship models are being consigned to storage and become available only to researchers “by appointment”. I recall as a student visiting the National Maritime Museum, this would be about 1967, and seeing a room full of model ships. There was a magnificent builders model of HMS Queen Mary which impressed me greatly and which, I think, was the basis of my life long interest in ship modelling. I still have the drawings I ordered (less than two pounds in those days!). I re-visited the NMM 40 years later and was really disappointed in the lack of 20th century models of any type. The same is true of the Imperial War Museum which has followed the same trend.

 

Our hobby will suffer when there is no public, official interest in the modeller’s art to inspire the younger set. Already they are limited to things that don’t require any planning, thought or imagination and which don’t take more than 15 minutes to complete. The younger set can be inspired though. I happened to see a repeat of James May’s Toy Story the other day on constructing a full sized “Airfix” Spitfire, and the kids he had helping had a great time. I think they felt some level of accomplishment and some of them may carry on the hobby.

 

Cheers

 

Don.

Edited By Don Koehler on 12/09/2011 05:56:30

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

An interesting footnote to the above: **LINK** the Museum has electronically cap[ured the old galleries before their closure.

Colin

[Bob WilsonParticipant @bobwilson59101]

I deplore the demise of the gallery as much as anyone, but it is just the natural scheme of things! For whatever reasons, the general public is not really interested in our maritime heritage and such a collection is/was regarded by most people as "some nice boats!" The word "ship" has long since been phased out of the general British vocabulary in favour of the word "boat" in the lamentable process of "dumbing down!"

The other day. I was browsing the internet and I came across the following. It was written in 1906 and is as true today as it was then!

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“I think it may justly be inferred that the public do not want to hear about the Mercantile Marine, are entirely indifferent to the status of its members, and are content to take all the benefits to them as they take light and air – as coming in the course of nature, with the management and production of which they have no concern.

This opinion is borne out by my experience throughout our islands as a lecturer on the subject. Talking from the platform, I can always interest my hearers in any phase of the sea without introducing the slightest element of fiction. But I cannot induce them to read the matter up, nor can I find any evidence of the subject having been studied, however cursorily, except by persons who are, or have been, directly connected with it!

This I cannot fail to lament as being, in view of the paramount importance of the subject, quite unnatural and unnecessary, more especially when I see the intense interest manifested by people of all ranks and grades of education in games such as football, cricket and bridge, and the amount of earnest thought expended upon acquiring information concerning them, not only in their present, but in their past history.

I do not believe that it can be possible for anyone to feel more deeply than I do, the urgent necessity of awakening our people generally to the importance of the ocean to them, and certainly no one can can more sadly realise the difficulty of this task.”

Frank T. Bullen, 1906

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It does work to my advantage to some extent, because lots of libraries, museums or technical colleges have been getting rid of their technical journal for years, and a large number of important (to me) volumes have found their way into my own, now extensive, library. I continue to gain great pleasure from browsing through them – but to most they are of little interest!

Bob

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