More than 70,000 items gifted to Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives when the British Empire & Commonwealth Museum failed to find a new home in London have yet to be inventoried.
Until funding or sponsorship has been secured and new staff recruited, most of the 7,000 artefacts and 70,000 written archives, photographs and film recordings will remain languishing in storage.
In the meantime, the first ever item bought for the Empire & Commonwealth Museum is now on display in the front hall of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
The State Entry by Roderick MacKenzie (1856-1941) is a huge oil painting measuring 12 ft by 19½ ft that shows the procession of British officials and Indian princes at the Delhi Durbar of 1903 to hear Edward VII proclaimed as Emperor of India.
The Empire & Commonwealth Museum opened in Bristol in 2002 but closed in 2008.
It was hoped that selling the building next to Temple Meads would pay for the collection to move to London, but the museum failed to find a new home, with one suggestion for this being public antipathy towards the UK’s colonial past.
The museum’s entire collection was subsequently gifted to Bristol Museum.
Once a full inventory has been undertaken, there are plans to create a small display of objects from the collection in 2015.
