As grateful as I was for the opportunity afforded by yesterday's open day to wander around Amgueddfa Cymru's National Collections Centre in Nantgarw, it was hard not to feel frustrated that the building's contents aren't on permanent public display. And all the more so when I learned from a fellow visitor about the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum.
The museum opened in Butetown in Cardiff in 1977 but closed its doors in 1998, just one of many victims of the redevelopment of Cardiff Bay - the building bulldozed to make way for Mermaid Quay. The National Waterfront Museum was subsequently established in Swansea to house some of the exhibits, and a few other items seem to have gone to various sites including the Museum of Cardiff and St Fagans - but so much remains on shelves, unseen and gathering dust, in the Nantgarw warehouse.
The plight of all of this industrial heritage - what modern Wales was founded on, essentially - is all the more infuriating when you consider the planned relocation of the Museum of Military Medicine from Aldershot to the Bay. How can Cardiff Council justify actively courting that move when they shut down not only the Welsh Industrial and Maritime Museum but also the Butetown History and Arts Centre?
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