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Number 5 - Geological Curators Group

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Fig. 10. Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum have shared the Clarence Street building with the Library sincethe turn of the century (Area Museum Council for the South West).Her careful curation thus saved the collectionfrom complete ruin. From 1979 the collectionwas stored in an attic room in the annexe. Thedrawers from same cabinets and the fibre boxeswere placed on open shelves. Since then variousspecimens have emerged from other places in themuseum and its large object store, andespecially from the schools loan store.Fig. 11. The office annexe on the other sideof the street from the Art Gallery andMuseum, where the geological collection wasformerly housed (AMCSW).The collection has lately been almost completelyunused, because of its inaccessibility anddisorder, and because the museum staff havelacked any specialist geological knowledge.Only a small part of the 1930s display remainedin the main museum until the currentreorganisation, and a few of Edward Wilson'sminerals have been put in the exhibit on Wilson(see p.191). Several specimens have been usedin a 'Hidden Treasures' temporary exhibitionscheme which puts material from the storedcollections on temporary display at the sametime as publication of an article in a regularcolumn in the Gloucestershire Echo. A few itemsare used for school loans. Very little hasbeen published about the collections apart frombrief summaries by Cleevely (1983) and Steward(1986). HST examined the collections in the1970s. T. Pettigrew (Sunderland Museum) spent aweek in 1978-1979 on initial sorting anddocumentation, and Dr M. L. K. Curtis (BristolCity Museum) spent a few days curating some ofthe minerals and advising on the purchase of aregister, specimen labels and self-sealingpolythene bags. Their work was later to be veryuseful. Otherwise the collection was unseen andalmost forgotten by the outside world.The collection's size and state demanded atleast several months' specialist curatorialeffort - far more than any nearby museum couldspare. Nevertheless there was (and still is) noprospect of recruiting the service's ownspecialist. The only sensible option (other

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