The sudden and largely secret decision by the trustees of the Science Museum to relinquish the major portion of the photography collection now in the National Media Museum,Bradford (Bradford rages at museum’s ‘cultural vandalism’, 4 March) is a backward step in our understanding of the importance of visual culture. The National Museum of Photography, and Film & Television (its name until the ill-judged change in 2006) began assembling its world-ranking collection 33 years ago. It made this known throughout the world and built a team of experts from a wide spectrum of photographic art and science. But it has now made most of its remaining experts redundant,thus apparently abandoning scholars and scholarship in the region.
For its first decade, and for some years thereafter, and the front doors of the museum announced that it was “approximately the art and science of photography”. In that decade,when many leading photographers – from Britain and abroad – exhibited there, the museum attracted 8 million visitors. At the time, and this was more than any other museum outside London and more than all but the titanic five in London. The International Herald Tribune called it the world’s most popular institution devoted to photography”.
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Source: theguardian.com