I would like to share with you a letter from distinguished actor Sara Kestelman, who is also a donor and visitor to the V&A Museum. While the Theatre & Performance department will probably now survive in a much-truncated form along with Furniture, Fashion/ Textiles in a new department. Her letter highlights the promises made by the V&A when the Theatre Museum was closed & the importance of saving staff expertise, plus having a specialist approach to the materials. Her concerns echo those who fear the V&A management do not fully understand the importance and the specialist nature of this UK wide national theatre & performance collection. There has not been a full external consolation with stakeholders, which is disappointing. Reassurances have been made to SIBMAS and we will hold the V&A to these. We should know shortly the outcome of this V&A reorganisation and the number of job losses. We urge V&A management to keep as many of the hard-working, knowledgeable staff as possible. When the theatre/ performance world is back on its feet it should have a national collection with expert staff who are capable and worthy of the great heritage of UK theatre/ performance. We thank Sara for her passionate letter.
Thank you again for your support, keep sharing this petition and if you have not already done so, please write a letter to Dr, Hunt. Templates available via the SIBMAS website.
Dear Tristram Hunt
I am writing as a member of the V&A, a lifetime visitor, and a donor of the archive of my theatre and screen work.
In fact, two archives: my late father, Morris Kestelman, RA, who, before becoming Head of Fine Art at the Central School of Art and Design (now Central St Martins) designed several productions at Sadlers Wells for Sir Tyrone Guthrie and, after the war, at The Old Vic including the sets for Laurence Olivier’s Richard III.
It was while gathering together my father’s archive of designs and model sets that I was honoured by the V&A to create an archive of my own, spanning a career of 56 years as an actor.
I had previously donated to the V&A the green silk dress designed by the late and great Sally Jacobs for Peter Brook’s seminal production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the RSC in 1970 in which I doubled Titania/Hippolyta. And amongst many other items, you now have my Olivier Award for the musical Cabaret at The Donmar directed by Sam Mendes.
In this terrible year of the Covid 19 pandemic, the arts have been devastated. Many small venues may not re-open. Many artists may have to find another source of income. I personally was performing in The Visit at the RNT when the pandemic broke.
It was heart breaking to have to close the theatres.
Heart breaking to close the museums and galleries.
The importance and value contained in the extraordinary Theatre collection and archives cannot be underestimated. Its importance equal to any of the other magnificent collections housed in the V&A. And the expertise, unique knowledge, respect, passion and skill of the research archivists and curators is unmatched and irreplaceable.
The history of theatre and the performing arts in Great Britain is revered worldwide as are the extensive, exhaustive and valuable research archives.
The arts are always vulnerable. But our shared pride, surely, is forged in the bedrock of our history, our traditions and the international acclaim for our standards and achievement. And our shared pride that our heritage is safe, entrusted to the guardians of culture to treasure, cherish and celebrate.
The V&A is one such guardian.
When the Theatre Museum so sadly had to close in Covent Garden, a promise was made by the V&A to maintain, shelter, and venerate the precious work.
A promise that gave assurance and continuity.
A promise that recognised the priceless riches in its safe keeping.
A promise, a responsibility, and an honour.
The proposal to eclipse and close down the Theatre Department is not only sacrilegious, not only a scandal and a betrayal, but it is also senseless. It denies the essential and undeniable heartbeat and life blood of storytelling, the power of living theatre, living people. Not inanimate, not furniture but an evolving, enduring, robust energy embracing the magic and mystery of art reflecting life, life in art.
The archives gathered over decades are donated in trust and good faith by practitioners whose careers have helped shape our history and tradition. The detail they contain evidence the evolution of theatre and the performing arts. These artists and their collections are part of the future as well as the past. Crush and dismantle it at your peril.
It is astonishing and disgraceful that the V&A, the wonderful, venerated V&A, would rather deny and obliterate than celebrate what you are so privileged to house under your magnificent roof.
If the proposed plans go ahead, the V&A will unquestionably go down in history as philistine and cavalier.
That surely, surely cannot be what you want.
Sincerely yours,
Sara Kestelman
Image: "Factory Theatre" by kaykaybarrie is licensed under CC BY 2.0