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CANTERBURY’S PAST - AND ITS FUTURE
20.01.2012 / Museums / 0 Comments
The Beaney, the cathedral city’s museum and library, is being transformed to fit a new culture-hungry generation
the city, Whitefriars, with a new the- atre and a museum clustering near the Romanesque masterpiece, the cathedral.
The £17.4m Marlowe opened in October, a few yards from the final development, the Beaney. The muse- um was a new home for the collec- tions developed from the 1820s by the local philosophical society, shar- ing with the public library. "It was basically a 'cabinet of curiosities'" says Joanna Jones, the city's first director of museums and galleries. "Lots of natural history and objects brought back by adventurers and explorers, and paintings". At least half of what is being installed when Jones takes delivery of her museum in mid-March has not been seen for at least a generation.
Completion has been delayed first by the discovery of archaeologi- cal treasures beneath the founda- tions, some of which will have a spe- cial display in the museum's offer. They range from the complete and undamaged Roman gold necklace of about AD 150, which will take pride of place when the Beaney reopens in September, to 18th century pewter tankards from various inns that occu- pied the site. Rotting foundations were also found and caverns where
structural support should have been, so much of the building has had to be underpinned. The intricate façade was also found to be in very bad repair, much of the carving and mosaic-work having to be remade by modern craftspeople.
Two unremarkable villas and a disused factory behind the old muse- um and library were acquired and demolished, allowing the new build.
The old Beaney was a pioneer in that it combined library and museum services in a way that is being pur- sued in other urban centres now, but it was built without visitor services - no lifts, no café, not even a public toi- let. They are all incorporated in the new facilities, with a second wheel- chair-accessible entrance in adjacent Best Lane. "It is lighter and more wel- coming" says Jo Jones, "with a real emphasis on people exploring and engaging with the collections".
Contemporary art is to have a new emphasis, and with the help of the Arts Council a triple window by the artist Laura Thomas has been commissioned, thick glass in which strands of fabrics are embedded.
A temporary exhibitions gallery's first show will be of works by Henry Moore, some borrowed from the Tate Gallery and the Arts Council to com-
plement Canterbury's own holdings of lithographs by Moore. Working artists will be asked to give demon- strations and workshops of their practices in a new ground floor com- munity centre.
The traditional collections, much of them banished to stores in the 1950s will have an equally high pro- file: a natural history space, and objects collected by intrepid contrib- utors, mostly from the 18th century, in the Explorers Gallery. But it is also an art museum with a substantial col- lection, with a prominenet feature being the Van Dyck portrait of a local 17th century MP, Sir Basil Dixwell, acquired in 2004 with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund for just under £1m. Canterbury also has an important collection of the work of the locally born 19th century landscape painter Thomas Sidney Cooper who will have a gallery devoted to his work.
"The Beaney in 2012 is a seamless operation between the books, the objects and the paintings, and it's about being very relevant to people, to encourage them to keep coming back" says Jo Jones. "It's telling them about their history and heritage, but about what contemporary Canterbury is like as well."
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