Theatre Lighting Museum

[Ynot]

Just seen this e-mail which looks like it's been sent to a variety of contacts, so some of you may have also seen a copy.

Sadly, most of our more ancient kit has gone over the years but I guess someone out there might have something to add to their collection...

The contact mail is david.sandham@sky.com for anyone who might want to get in touch.

Below is a screen grab of the kit he mentions (The SL and Quartet aren't THAT old, though... 🙂 )

[delicolor]

Alas, David Sandham’s project has foundered after the Regent Centre board withdrew their support.

Jim Laws has offered a barn in Suffolk to achieve the same end, more anon.

[gareth]

Very unfortunate. It sounded like a great project, and David was certainly enthusiastic about getting it up and running. The Galaxy 3 from my old venue was on its way down there as one of the consoles which was supposed to be part of the project. The decision by certain members of the board to U-turn on their commitment to support this project seems very short-sighted.

[Brian]

15 hours ago, delicolor said:

Alas, David Sandham’s project has foundered after the Regent Centre board withdrew their support.

Jim Laws has offered a barn in Suffolk to achieve the same end, more anon.

This is, of course, the same Jim Laws who downsized his collection about 10 years ago. 

[delicolor]

On 5/8/2022 at 10:08 AM, Brian said:

This is, of course, the same Jim Laws who downsized his collection about 10 years ago. 

Yes, but he was running a business back then, not a museum.

He has already started to clear out that barn in anticipation of making it a viable display space. However Jim is getting on a bit now and Beccles is not exactly a busy metropolis so the idea is that the contents of the museum can readily go to a better home if/when the opportunity arises.

[Brian]

6 hours ago, delicolor said:

...so the idea is that the contents of the museum can readily go to a better home if/when the opportunity arises.

We've been here before. He moved on most of the desks to NEET who couldn't find a permanent display space, despite years of trying, and now most of them are (?) in storage at White Light.

[J Pearce]

Being brutally honest - this sort of thing is unlikely to ever find a home anywhere central and accessible. Unless someone with lots of money to spare decides to play benefactor (person or charity or government) I'd be surprised if a museum of lighting equipment would ever manage to pay the rent even on a barn in rural nowhere land.

That's not to say it's not valuable cultural history - it is! - but that is to say that it will never pay for itself, and that's before you get into curation and conservation. 

The best hope is that an existing museum (or museums) is able to take on some or all of the collection and care for and display it. That seems a small hope though considering the V&A have all but closed their theatre department and most local museums are stretched very thin looking after what they already have.

Realistically, even if one of the big museums decided to make an exhibition of theatre history, how many lighting desks would they want to show? Places like the computer museums might take one or two as an interesting look at applied computing.

At the Rep we have a lovely little collection of historic sound equipment, it lives on a shelf in the sound office - that's probably the real home for much of this stuff, care and backstage/FOH exhibitions within venues/companies that maintain a meaningful connection to the artefact.

Perhaps the way forward is a database of artefacts that can be borrowed/hired for exhibitions as wanted?

[Ynot]

2 hours ago, J Pearce said:

Being brutally honest - this sort of thing is unlikely to ever find a home anywhere central and accessible. Unless someone with lots of money to spare decides to play benefactor (person or charity or government) I'd be surprised if a museum of lighting equipment would ever manage to pay the rent even on a barn in rural nowhere land.

But isn't that exactly what the chap in my OP has said they want to do??? "We have space and want your vintage gear..."

On a different tangent, I seem to recall there used to be a theatre museum near Drury Lane I think, but I believe that didn't survive for long 😞

[Malcolm Gordon]

4 hours ago, Ynot said:

On a different tangent, I seem to recall there used to be a theatre museum near Drury Lane I think, but I believe that didn't survive for long 😞

I remember visiting it. According to Wikipedia it was created in 1974 and moved to converted premises in Covent Garden in 1987. I think the entrance was in Russell Street. It was closed in 2007 and the collections moved to the V&A, where it became the Theatre and Performance Department but much of the collection has remained out of sight. In 2021 it was facing closure again under the V&A's restructuring and there is a campaign to save it.