Baroness Thatcher Museum

Thanks Nick for that thought-provoking post!..and 'provocation' does seem to be at the heart of these discussions about Mrs T - you'll notice that I've given the ex-prime minister her full title in the title for the post here....(isn't it interesting that the way one refers to the person seems to say a lot about what one thought about her?.....'ex-prime minister' sounds like a Monty Python sketch.....

Anyway, personally I'm pretty ambivalent about a Margaret Thatcher Museum, I can see reasons why and why not...my historian head tells me that we have a duty to do something with such a legacy?...I think what's interesting here is that the debates highlight that the museum (history even) is always intimately bound-up with the politicial...
My preference, if we are to have a Thatcher Museum, is to have a whole series of Thatcher Museums...across the country....I think that would be really interesting (and in Helen's phrase (if we're borrowing phrases), 'co-productive'!)...I'm sure Grantham would have a lovely, biographical museum, with lots of ephemera from Mrs T's dad's shop....my money would be on the museum in Barnsley though...now that would be a really interesting exercise in co-production!....My feeling is that it could be both a space for reconciliation, as well as vitriol?.....

Could be worse...think about Jeremy Bentham and his 'auto-icon'....!

Mark  

Museums and politics (or more precisely, political leaders...)

Whilst I am glad to see the back of press coverage about Thatcher's funeral, I couldn't help reading with a great deal of interest this post about a possible Margaret Thatcher Museum, largely, because (Full disclosure here..) I too reacted with immediate horror at the very thought.....

What I think is particularly thought provoking, is the comments feed about this article. Opinion veers from 'this really isn't on' (Anon) and 'I've never heard anything so ridiculous and offensive' (Linden Thomas) to 'it is both the divisive nature of her legacy and her role in the shaping of this country that makes margaret Thatcher such an interesting and apt subject for a national museum and library' (Keith Thomas)

The Cherish Freedom Trust who are behind the project have so far raised £1m for the project. Of course, who has made substantial donations to get the project off the ground also reveals the political nature of the 'philanthropic gesture' (phrase borrowed from Mark!).  Comments from supporters of the project can be seen on their website.

The website proposes that the museum will:

focus on public outreach, working with teachers and lecturers in primary and secondary schools and in colleges of higher and further education throughout the United Kindgom, especially in challenging communities, so that the next generation receives a truly balanced economic, political and historical education

To return to the comments feed from the Museum Association post about this:

After all in the Gove inspired era we are now in it would surely be better to have a more chronological approach. Shouldnt we have a museum to The late 70s leader Callaghan. It could start with a three day opening week . Night at the museum would of course be by candlelight to recreate those cosy electricty free evenings we so loved. As an interactive we could get the visitors to empty the bins and clean the overflowing sewers.. Its bound to be such a hit that people would visit again and again the beauty being to add a sense of pre thatcher realism we could put the prices up by 27 % each year in line with innflation. If the museum failed and racked up huge losses we could get a bail out from the IMF

(Anon)

Clearly, this is a project which, much like the funeral, provokes a radical divide. It is this power of museums to embody the ways in which we think and feel about the world which make them such powerful tools to construct (rather than reflect) our ideas about society.