Textile Conservation experts face the sack in a material world (UK)
Bagpuss, Freddie Mercury’s fake leather trousers and Henry VIII’s football boots would all be in a much worse state without a British group of conservation experts.
Now the Textile Conservation Centre, which has restored thousands of historically significant bits of fabric and trained about half the leading textile conservators in the world, faces becoming history itself.
The centre at the University of Southampton is to shut its doors on October 31. The university, which houses the centre on its School of Art campus in Winchester, gave warning two years ago that it could no longer afford to support it after 2009. It hoped then that an alternative home could be found but a proposed deal with the University of Oxford has fallen through.
Peter Longman, deputy chairman of the foundation that owns the centre, said that the staff, some of the most respected conservators in the heritage world, will now all be made redundant on November 1. Their expertise built up over more than 30 years will be “scattered to the winds”. Like darts, ceremonial pageantry and whisky distilling, textile conservation is one of those specialist fields in which Britain still leads the world. The centre’s predicament has provoked international outrage among museum professionals and conservation experts...
Read entire article at Times (UK)
Now the Textile Conservation Centre, which has restored thousands of historically significant bits of fabric and trained about half the leading textile conservators in the world, faces becoming history itself.
The centre at the University of Southampton is to shut its doors on October 31. The university, which houses the centre on its School of Art campus in Winchester, gave warning two years ago that it could no longer afford to support it after 2009. It hoped then that an alternative home could be found but a proposed deal with the University of Oxford has fallen through.
Peter Longman, deputy chairman of the foundation that owns the centre, said that the staff, some of the most respected conservators in the heritage world, will now all be made redundant on November 1. Their expertise built up over more than 30 years will be “scattered to the winds”. Like darts, ceremonial pageantry and whisky distilling, textile conservation is one of those specialist fields in which Britain still leads the world. The centre’s predicament has provoked international outrage among museum professionals and conservation experts...