Plans have been in the works at Portsmouth City Council to carry out an extensive overhaul of the museum storage facilities after documents which came to light inside the organization pointed to serious problems with the current system. The store which holds the primary museum collections in the city in Hilsea has been cited to be outdated, inappropriate and requiring hazardous repair therefore placing numerous precious historical artifacts at potential risk of being spoiled irreversibly.
According to the report released originally by the BBC, the Hilsea facility has not lived up to the current expectations in terms of preservation of collections and increasing access to them. The council is currently seeking external funding to get long overdue renovations done, in a bid to preserve the resources representing the history of Portsmouth and open access to long-ignored items to a broader audience.
Another key issue that was realized by the evaluation of the council is the natural history collection, which has lacked its own curator in the last 30 years, until 2018. Consequently, items in part of the collection were rendered inaccessible exposing them to pest attacks and degeneration.
The council is trying to emulate a sense of order and rejuvenate these abandoned treasures by intending to recruit a new collections manager, who will spearhead the restructuring process. In conjunction with this booking, a mandate will be sent out to volunteers, where they will be called upon to volunteer, whose functions will center on cataloguing and helping in simple conservation duties.
Part of the collection may be scrapped such as some aging cannons and those materials that are old and no longer pertinent could also be stripped of the collection. Some long-loaned objects such as cannons that have been lent out to other institutions decades ago, may not be recalled in the review.
Councillor Steve Pitt, leader of the Portsmouth City Council, has voiced the concerns that better storage conditions and accessibility should be enhanced. We are determined to open our collections up and treat them well. This is a review needed so that our heritage can be maintained and open to the people to do something with it,” he added.
The council’s long-term ambition extends beyond just upgrading Hilsea. This is the canoe lake on Portsmouth seafront where plans are under discussion to create a new more modern storage site called Lumps Fort. This new future venue may offer greater management of the environment and easier access of the people to the warehoused goods.
Its future exhibitions and educational programs are also expected to be facilitated through the changes coming up, such that more historical items get into the limelight- some of which have never been displayed because of space or preservative matters.
The costs involved to carry out the project have yet not been confirmed, though the council is seeking ways to source funds, like heritage and arts grants. It has been emphasized by officials that the time frame and magnitude of the upgrade will be an outcome of the rate at which the required financial support can be raised.
The project has been warmly received by experts and regional historians, who say that the museums of Portsmouth contain nationally and regionally important collections. These pieces of art should be taken care of in a proper way and presented to the attention of the audience, as this might make the cultural image of the city superior and offer greater experience to visitors and people who live in this city.
Such a switch in the council is interpreted as only a part of the overall trend to modernise the local heritage infrastructure so that the heritage of the city remained not only better preserved but also more effectively made available to be shared by the future generations.
