Beckford’s Tower used their grant last year to restore some historic cornicing for their newly renovated museum.
In July, just over £18,000 was awarded to seven museums across the South West of England in On Display! Grants. These grants support the conservation and specialist mounting of museum objects so museums can display items they previously couldn’t. As part of the funding, the museums are also encouraged to engage audiences in their objects’ stories. We were very pleased to receive many strong applications. The museums who have been awarded grants are:
- The Diving Museum, Hampshire
- Dunkirk Mill Museum, Gloucestershire
- Liskeard and District Museum, Cornwall
- No.1 Royal Crescent, Bath
- Salcombe Maritime Museum, Devon
- Shaftesbury Abbey Museum, Dorset
- South Somerset Heritage Collection, Somerset
During the selection process, it has been valuable to see how many of the projects build upon the work of other grants or schemes, demonstrating how museum support has many different facets. We’ve picked out just a handful to illustrate the difference that the On Display! grants will make to the successful museums.
Following a conservation audit previously funded by South East Museum Development, The Diving Museum in Gosport identified seven key objects from their nationally important collection of diving-related material that were in urgent need of specialist mounts. One of these is an example of the first SCUBA breathing apparatus. The previous mounts could not take the weight or sufficiently support components of the objects and as a result, the rubber elements were cracking. The objects were taken off display due to the damage caused by the mounts and have been in storage ever since. Now, the museum is in the process of redisplaying their collection as part of a wider redevelopment project and they have prioritised acquiring specialist mounts for these seven items. Their On Display! Grant will fund these new mounts, enabling them to tell an integral part of the story of diving.
No.1 Royal Crescent in Bath has recently acquired four oil portraits by Thomas Gainsborough through the Acceptance in Lieu scheme. The portraits, painted in Bath c.1763, show four members of the Tugwell family. It’s rare for a set of portraits of members of the same family by Thomas Gainsborough to survive together, rarer still is the fact that the sitters are middle-class manufacturers from a small West Country town. Unfortunately, the current condition of the paintings prevents them from being displayed. Conservators have identified the treatments required to raise them to display standard and the On Display! grant will cover the cost of these treatments. These portraits will be showcased in a new temporary display, before being integrated into the museum’s permanent displays.
Shaftesbury Abbey Museum owns one of the only four known artistic works in England about the Mass of St Gregory. The statue depicting the religious scene is in many pieces, but it retains a significant amount of medieval paintwork including areas of gilding. This makes the statue the most important single artefact in the museum’s collection and of regional, if not national importance. Although the statue had been displayed previously, the reconstruction work was poorly handled, so it was dismantled to prevent further damage. Shaftesbury Abbey Museum received funding from Arts Council England for a detailed conservation assessment, but the museum could not provide an accurate costing for remedial work before the conservator submitted their report, meaning the museum has a shortfall to address. This is where our On Display! grant comes in. The remedial work will prevent further deterioration so that the statue can safely go on public display, giving access to this rare artwork.
This is the last time Museum Development South West will be running the On Display! grant scheme. If you’re interested in which grants your museum could still benefit from this year, take a look at our Talking Nature and Capacity Builder grants opening this autumn.