Abstract
The largest and most significant archive devoted to the history of British theatre is hosted by the Victoria and Albert Museum and is now referred to as the Theatre and Performance collections. Originally known as the Enthoven collection, it was established in 1924 by Gabrielle Enthoven, who had lobbied for such a collection to be established for many years. In 1911 Enthoven proposed in a letter to the Observer: a comprehensive theatrical section in an existing museum to comprise specimens of all the different branches necessary to the workings of a play from the construction of the theatre, the designing of the scenery and costumes, to the smallest workings necessary in the house. Also a library and a collection of playbills, prints, pictures and relics etc. I want the section to be the place where the producer, actor, author and critic will naturally go for information, both on what is being done in this and other countries at present, and what has been done before.
Initially, neither the British Museum nor the Victoria and Albert Museum showed much interest in her proposal, although the London Museum was more positive. After the First World War Enthoven continued her campaign and the Victoria and Albert Museum eventually agreed to accept Enthoven’s own theatre collection, which was transferred to the Museum the following year. Enthoven managed the collection unpaid and financed the assistants who worked with her. Over the years the collection has expanded rapidly, partly as the result of bequests, placing heavy demands on storage space and on cataloguing newly acquired material. Holdings range across the performing arts, encompassing not only theatre, but also circus, music hall, variety, puppetry and dance. Items from the collection are frequently featured in major V&A exhibitions, such as the David Bowie is … exhibition in 2013 and the forthcoming Alice: Curious and Curiouser, demonstrating a continuing popular interest in the artefacts it has preserved.
Theatre forms a significant part of British cultural heritage and the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collection is a crucial source of information for authors, academics, broadcasters, journalists and theatre professionals accessing Britain’s theatrical past. Its value is greatly reinforced by the specialist knowledge and institutional memories shared by its staff, whose expertise is crucial all those who use it for research. Consequently, it is a matter of concern that the proposed closure of the Theatre and Performance Department and reallocation of those of its staff not made redundant may diminish the accessibility and usefulness of this extraordinary Aladdin’s cave of theatre history to future users. It is to lose its dedicated archives, library and collection team in addition to curatorial staff equating to a disproportionate reduction in staff when compared to the 20% cuts announced across the board. The opportunities for the Collection to mount or contribute to internally curated exhibitions highlighting the significant place of theatre and performance in Britain’s cultural heritage is also likely to be diminished as a result of the proposed cuts. In addition, the threatened reduction of staff in the National Art Library, also a repository of theatre and related materials, will be a further blow to researchers.
For the editors and many of the authors published in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, not to mention its readers, the V&A archive has been an invaluable resource. While the collection itself and its current display spaces within the Museum are not under threat and some of its curatorial staff will remain in place, albeit transferred to other departments, the relationships it has developed with theatre professionals, the media and the academic community may well be undermined. It will also lose its dedicated reading room and will no longer be able to provide users of the Collection with the level of on-site expertise previously available. According to the Museum: Colleagues that were previously spread by collection – for example, Fashion, Theatre & Performance, and Architecture – would retain their area of specialism, but be united within new cross-disciplinary teams, across three time periods for objects from Europe and the Americas that cover medieval to the contemporary.
While on the surface cross-disciplinarity might be a welcome development, the Theatre Collection’s strongest focus is on British theatre from the eighteenth century onwards. Its team are already able to consult and work with specialists in other disciplinary areas of the V&A. Cross-disciplinarity works best when it is organic: the compulsory and often botched amalgamations of different disciplines into artificially created administrative units in the university sector for financial reasons bear witness to this. The Museum’s statement continues: These proposals will impact how our collections teams work together but will not change our gallery spaces or visitor experience at the V&A – dedicated rooms and galleries for Ceramics, Photography, Sculpture, Paintings, Architecture, Fashion (and so on) will be there for all to enjoy for years to come.
Theatre is relegated here to the ‘and so on’ category of art forms. This is a far cry from the years 1987–2007 when the Collection was housed in converted premises in Covent Garden as a semi-autonomous unit. In 2007 the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden closed, on account of insufficient funding, and the collection was moved back to the Victorian and Albert Museum, with much of the collection stored at Blythe House in West Kensington. The Collection is now scheduled to move to the Museum’s new quarters in Stratford East, the building of which, in the light of the current situation, might justly be perceived as an unnecessary vanity project. Some of the collection has been digitised, but a vast amount remains uncatalogued, a project which will eventually require considerable investment. This is a unique collection containing playbills, ledgers, contracts, portraits, prints, model theatres, costumes, digital records of performance, requiring a diverse number of expert skills for its curation. Through a system of negotiated accruals, the Collection also updates the historical record on an annual basis: this too is likely to be under threat if the proposed reductions in staff go ahead, severely reducing the value of the Collection to future generations.
Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film urges the Victoria and Albert Museum to rethink its decision to close the Theatre and Performance Department and to avoid the potential loss of expertise that this will entail. We therefore wish to stress how vitally important it is that access to the collection and its visibility be maintained. Many contributors to and readers of this journal have benefited from the collection’s resources at various times and want to continue to do so. Our theatrical heritage is worth preserving, nurturing and celebrating: it is time to stop treating it as the poor relation whenever financial cuts threaten.
