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Agenda item
Curator's Report
Minutes:
The Chair expressed her congratulations to the Fishermen’s Museum on their accreditation.
Cathy Walling, Museum Curator, presented a report to provide an update on issues arising from previous meetings and confirmation of Curator’s actions.
1. The Old Town Hall Museum’s final day open to the public is Sunday 29 March 2015. The collections will then be transferred and placed into storage at St. Johns Place and the Corporate Archive. This work will involve a 20 step plan to pack and remove the collections. The curator confirmed the Corporate Archive was environmentally controlled and secure.
Mr Peak suggested that priority should be given to getting the permanent exhibition back up and running at St. Johns Place. The Curator advised him that it was intended to provide a temporary display because it would take longer to fund and plan a permanent display which could take between1 year and 1 year and 6 months to arrange. The Chair added that the process could not be rushed and it was the consequence of year on year funding cuts. The museum would need to be resilient.
Councillor Hodges said he would like to see a permanent display including artefacts. The Curator confirmed the ‘Ships Figure Heads’ would be moved to St. Johns Place.
2. The Arts Council has granted Hastings Museum and Art Gallery a resilience fund of £33,000. The museum will undertake a thorough review of how it operates, including governance, income generation, audience engagement, workforce development and consider what exhibitions and activities are provided. The project will run for 12 months commencing on 1 April 2015.
Councillor Charlesworth asked if a detailed list could be provided of items that are going into storage. The Curator confirmed that she would hold complete records of items in storage and items on temporary display and that access to the collections would be given to researchers.
3. The Accreditation return has been submitted and the removal of the Old Town Hall Museum accreditation will be processed at the same time. The assessment will be made during the new few weeks.
4. Permission has been given for the following requests for reproduction of images:
a) 3 images of the Pier Ballroom for a BBC2 documentary, with working title 'Demolition'.
b) an image of the oil painting 'The Sacrifice of Jepthah' by Sebastiano Mazzoni for a book on the artist written by Dr Paolo Benassai and published by Edizioni dei Soncino, Italy.
5. The ‘Young Curators’ project led by HMAG in partnership with Culture Shift and the Hastings and Rother Arts Education network, for 14-19 years old to undertake practical work experience of the Museum sector, is underway. So far the group have led a taster day and family activity day during February half-term. Plans are in progress for an easter egg trail and family fun day during the Easter holidays. Later in 2015 the group will produce a display and provide creative workshops on the role of women in WWI. The Curator will give a full report on what they have achieved at later meeting.
6. In 2015, the museum joined ‘Visitor Finder’, funded by the Arts Council England. The purpose of the group is to help the museum gather visitor data and to understand and use it more effectively. Working with other local museums and galleries, the data will provide an insight into the demographics and profile proximity; behaviour, attitudes and motivation of visitors. The Curator advised that the questions in the questionnaire did cover visitor ‘intentions’ and were spelt out clearly.
RESOLVED – (by 13 votes to 1) that the Committee accepts the report and are satisfied with the comments in the report.
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