Background to the proposal
6. The Museum of London was established by the Museum
of London Act 1965 (the 1965 Act), which had the effect of merging
two existing museums, the London Museum and the Guildhall Museum,
defining the functions of the new museum and appointing a Board
of Governors to manage it and hold its property.
7. The 1965 Act required the Board to acquire premises
situated in the City of London for the purposes of maintaining
and exhibiting their collections and subsequently to keep their
collections at those premises. The Act does, however, permit
the Board to store or exhibit objects in their collections at
other places, that is, other than at their own premises, including
premises outside the confines of the City of London. The effect
of the 1965 Act has therefore been to allow the Museum of London
to make items in its collections available for exhibition by other
institutions, at locations outside the City of London, but the
Museum may not itself acquire any exhibition facility which is
outside the geographical limit imposed by the Act.
8. Parliament's intention in passing the Museum of
London Act 1986 (the 1986 Act) was, among other things, to amend
the constitution of the Museum's Board of Governors in the light
of the abolition of the Greater London Council. Of the six members
of the Board who had, prior to the 1986 Act, been appointed by
the Greater London Council, three are now appointed by the Prime
Minister and three by the Corporation of the City of London.
The Prime Minister and the Corporation both now appoint nine members
each.
9. The 1986 Act also introduced a more explicit definition
of the functions of the Museum's Board of Governors, providing
that the Board was required to:
- care for, preserve and add
to the objects in their collections;
- secure that those objects are exhibited to the
public and made available to persons wishing to inspect them in
connection with study or research; and
- generally to promote understanding and appreciation
of historic and contemporary London and of its society and culture,
both by means of their collections and by such other means as
they consider appropriate.
10. The Department have explained that the Museum
of London began assembling material specifically relating to the
port of London and Docklands areas in the early 1980s, as a response
to the closure of the London docks.[3]
The result has been a 'Port and Docklands' collection which is
regarded as an integral part of the Museum of London's 20th
century collections. It was the collection of this material which
led to proposals for a new museum in the Docklands which would
focus on the history of the area, of commerce on the Thames and
the people who were involved in shipping.
11. The Department refers to the substance of evidence
submitted in 1981 by the Board of the Museum of London to the
then House of Commons Education, Science and Arts Committee.
In its evidence the Board indicated that it had resolved to seek
opportunities to develop new display space for exhibitions on
London's maritime and industrial past and they preferred that
these new facilities should themselves be situated within the
Docklands area. In their Annual Report for 1981/82, the Board
indicated their intention to establish a trust to take forward
the development of a separate Docklands Museum.[4]
In order to develop the Museum the Board would seek to identify
a suitable developer who would provide the 'shell' and 'core'
for the new facility; the remaining building and fitting out costs
would need to be met by the London Docklands Development Corporation,
and a Museum in Docklands Trust would need to be established to
raise the necessary exhibition and equipment costs. The Board
estimated that it would cost £15 million to establish the
new Museum.[5]
12. The Department record that the Museum of London's
plan was made feasible in 1997 when the Heritage Lottery Fund
(the Fund) approved a grant for £11.8 million to fund capital
works for the project. Other contributors also agreed to make
grants in support of the project, including the London Docklands
Development Corporation which made a grant of £3.14 million.
13. From June 2000, during the course of the development
of the Museum in Docklands, the Fund began to be concerned about
the way in which the project was being approached by the Museum's
Trustees and in particular about their assumptions concerning
likely visitor numbers.[6]
The Fund considered that the Trustees had failed to take adequate
account in their business plan of the way in which market conditions
were changing for operators of Museums after the national museums
were opened to the public free of charge. In the course of 2001
delays in building work began to give rise to additional development
costs. The Department have indicated that the Fund came to the
conclusion that the new Museum would require "the operational
strength of the Museum of London and its ability to lever in additional
funding" in order for it to be successful.[7]
The Fund furthermore felt that support costs could be reduced
if the two organisations were merged and in April 2002 it made
a merger a condition of its future support for the Museum in Docklands.
The governing bodies of both Museums formally approved plans
to seek a merger at meetings in March 2003.[8]
14. The Museum in Docklands was opened to the public
on 24 May 2003.
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