Museum needs to find a permanent home

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This article was published 03/10/2018 (2726 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The chair of the Brandon General Museum and Archives is stressing the need to find another permanent spot for the organization’s exhibits and artifacts.

“Definitely, we need to be looking, or the city needs to be looking. It’s their museum, not ours,” said board chair Barb Andrew. “The city needs to be looking for a different space.”

On Monday, Brandon City Council formally received a series of recommendations on the museum’s future from an ad hoc committee made up of city councillors and others.

Located at 19 Ninth St. in the former Manitoba Telecom Service building, the museum has struggled with low visitation over the years, with 1,092 people coming through in 2017.

Ongoing concerns about increasing utility costs led to the creation of an ad hoc committee in March, which included two members of council — Coun. Lonnie Patterson (South Centre), who is not seeking re-election, and Coun. Ron Brown (Richmond), who is running for re-election — museum board member Gregory Steele, and citizen representatives Elaine Alvis, Erich Stumme, and Gordon Wallman.

Among the recommendations are for the city and museum to work together on finding an interim office, display and storage space within existing city facilities until a new permanent location is found.

The committee also recommended the city make the necessary policy changes to allow others to become partners in the organization. The city is currently the only official member.

Other suggestions include naming a point person to put the recommendations in place, recruiting new board members, holding a summit to help collaborate with other organizations, apply for funding under the Government of Canada’s Legacy Fund, and including the history of Indigenous peoples as part of its overall vision and mission.

“The recommendations, I think, give us all in the community some potential things to work on if we are going to value a general museum and archives in our city, and I think we do as a community” Patterson said.

While the committee’s report recommends finding an interim space, no specific recommendations were made on where that should be. The committee also did not recommend a permanent location for the museum.

Patterson said the short amount of time the committee had to work with limited how fully it could investigate alternative locations.

However, she said she believed it was important for the city to play a role in figuring out what the future of the museum should be.

She said the recommendations will be sent to city administration for further review.

“The reality is that this will be up to the next mayor and council at the City of Brandon to take a look at.”

Earlier this year, council cut the museum’s funding by half to $40,000, with the condition that the task force be created.

Most of the budget is spent on rent, heat and staffing, Andrew said, and while the museum has been holding its own for now, the funding cut does affect their ability to bring in travelling exhibits or build on their permanent instalments.

The museum also continues to receive donated artifacts, she added.

“But at the end of the day, we have to come up with funding somewhere to properly house these artifacts and put together the archives where they’re searchable,” Andrew said. “This all takes money.”

City council formed the museum and archives in March 2007.

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