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Theatre Museum, Covent Garden in danger of closing

Published Tuesday 7 March 2006 at 15:35 by Alistair Smith

Britain’s only national museum for the performing arts, Covent Garden’s Theatre Museum, is threatened with permanent closure after its second bid for £2.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund was turned down.

Leading figures from the theatre world are rallying behind the organisation, claiming it would be a tragedy if it were allowed to close its home in the centre of theatreland.

The museum moved to its current base in 1987 but has been looking to upgrade the premises since 2004 when the Victoria & Albert Museum, which owns the building, made its first bid for HLF funding to revamp the site. Its £9.5 million request was rejected, as was its more recent bid for less than a third of that sum on the grounds that the site “would not repay the investment given the limitations of the building”.

Sir Donald Sinden, who, as chairman of the British Theatre Museum Association, was instrumental in the museum’s launch in the seventies and its move to Covent Garden, said he would support a campaign to save the site. Speaking to The Stage, the celebrated actor added: “It would be disastrous if it were to close. The fight we had to get it up and running in the first place was quite incredible. If it were to move back to the V&A, I don’t think we’d ever get premises again. It is essential that we have a theatre museum in England, in London, where we have the best theatre in the world.”

The trustees of the V&A, who include Arts Council England chair Christopher Frayling, are due to meet on March 23, when they are expected to discuss the future of the museum. However, the organisation has already said that “it recognises the limitations of the site” and that “considerable funds would be needed to transform it into a space which could accommodate permanent collections, exhibitions and educational activities”.

The V&A is now considering a number of options for the future of the Theatre Museum’s collection, which may include “separating out” its different activities into touring exhibitions, moving collections to the V&A or housing temporary exhibitions at the V&A. It has also said it is currently conducting a review among the theatre community, which will report in May.

However, The Art Newspaper has reported that if the collection were to be moved back to the Kensington base, it is unlikely there would be a permanent display for “at least a decade” and that the V&A’s exhibition programme is “nearly all arranged for the next five years”.

Save London Theatres Campaign chairman John Levitt said that he would fight to safeguard the future of the site and hoped to enlist the help of all sectors of the theatre world.

He added: “After 20 years of presenting the visual, physical and sound aspects of theatre and a fight over many years before that to get a full-scale Theatre Museum it would be quite crazy and pettifogging as well deeply philistine, for the Victoria & Albert Trustees to let this happen. I refuse to believe that they would be so short-sighted as to agree to such an unthinkable thing.”

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