2. MARCOTEÓRICO
2.8. Posición del tesista sobre el aumento del beneficio de la Terminación Anticipada
2.8.3. Aumento del beneficio de la Terminación Anticipada a un tercio
Many collections of sporting objects exist in England.2 What is it then specifically that means there is a need, or a desire, to change the status of these objects from a collection, into a museum? Why is it not suitable for these objects to be held within other museums venues, and instead a specific museum has been created to house the collections? To date, these issues have not been addressed. Therefore, the author asked the question, “How and why was the [sport specific] museum established?” As discussed above, nine of the museums included in this study responded to the answer. In addition, the author was able to include documented evidence which discussed the
2 Hood, A. Sports heritage network mapping survey: an overview of sports heritage collections. Henley:
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creation of the other two museums, Brooklands Museum and the British Surfing Museum. The findings are presented at figure 16.
Figure 16: The Primary Motivations for Creating Sport Specific Museums
Museum
Primary motivation
MCC Museum Created by the governing body to house an increasingly large collection
Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum
Created by the governing body to house a pre- existing collection
National Horse Racing Museum
Organised by an interested individual to house existing collections
Brooklands Museum A group of interested individuals lobbied the local council for support to protect a sporting heritage site and associated collections
World Rugby Museum Created by the governing body to house an increasingly large collection
River and Rowing Museum Led by a group of interested individuals
National Football Museum A group of interested individuals lobbied for the museum based on the existence of a prominent private collection
National Fencing Museum Set up by an interested individual who owned a large private collection
National Badminton Museum Created by the governing body to bring collections and archives associated with Badminton together National Hockey Museum Led by the governing body, and organised by
interested individuals to make a collection accessible British Surfing Museum Established from a private collection and led by an
interested individual Source: Author’s research
This evidence demonstrates that above all else, the existence of a pre-existing collection is the key determining factor in the process leading to the creation of a sport specific museum. As discussed in chapter two, because of the disinterest of the museum sector in terms of everyday history prior to the 1980s, the responsibility for protecting sporting collections has often been left to private individual collectors. Indeed, the respondents to the author’s survey all agree that the museum that exists today is primarily because of an individual, or number of individuals, who established collections built up often over a long period of time and given or loaned to the museum upon its creation. For example, Adam Chadwick, Curator of the MCC Museum, argues that private “collectors [are] extremely important because it is largely
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down to them that sports heritage has survived”.3 For those museums where the sporting collections were collected and owned by the governing body, there still appears to be a substantial input from individual collectors both prior to, and after the opening of the museum. For example, Katie Dodd from the National Hockey Museum asserts that “The Trustees [of the museum] have over the years developed a number of very good connections with collectors of hockey memorabilia from around the world”.4 Several of the trustees of the National Hockey Museum are also part of the governing body of hockey in England, the English Hockey Board. This suggests that the private collectors of sporting objects have been the singularly most significant factor in the creation of sport specific museums in England to date.
Alone, however, the existence of a collection is not enough to ensure a museum will be created about a sport. For example, several substantial collections of Rugby League artefacts exist and as yet, a museum about Rugby League has still to be established.5 Figure 16 demonstrates that in addition to the existence of a collection, there must be other additional factors which build the momentum of interest in creating a museum. For example, in the case of the NFM, this momentum was built through the homelessness of one of the finest footballing collections in existent, the Harry Langton, or FIFA, collection.6 The outrage felt by a number of interested individuals that this collection was not accessible to the public, led them to campaign for the creation of a museum about football. In addition, the River and Rowing Museum (RRM) was created by a group of individuals who campaigned together to establish a museum about the history and heritage of rowing.7 Paul Mainds, Chief Executive of the RRM, states that “the idea for the museum was formed by a group of rowing enthusiasts during the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles”.8 The group discussed the importance of protecting the heritage of the sport and returned to England to hold discussions with other groups in
3 Chadwick, A. Curator, MCC Museum, Lords. Response to the author’s survey. April 1st 2012. 4 Dodd, K. National Hockey Museum. Response to the author’s survey. May 12th 2013. 5 For example the collection owned by an ex-Rugby League player, Mike Stephenson.
6 Moore, K. In conversation with the author. January 30th 2014; National Football Museum (NFM). The Harry Langton Collection. Manchester: NFM. Date unknown. Accessed June 1st 2014.
http://www.nationalfootballmuseum.com/collections/about-our-collections/current/the-harry-langton- collection/
7 Henley Standard. ‘Fixer’ who helped found the River and Rowing Museum. September 12th 2011.
Accessed June 1st 2014. http://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/news.php?id=979120
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the town of Henley, who were exploring ways to present the history of the town in general.9 The two groups joined together and gathered support from the local council, the governing body of rowing itself, and private benefactors, to finally open the museum in 1998. It took time and significant lobbying of local organisations and funders to ensure the museum would be created. Of course, there are other influences which have contributed to the opening of these museums at these times, but the findings of this study suggest that the tenacity of the individual to campaign for the need for that specific museum at that specific time, is an essential factor.
In terms of the relationship of sport governing bodies to the creation of sport specific museums, the involvement appears to be reactive rather than pro-active, that is, because a collection has exceeded its current storage capacity rather than the governing body creating a museum out of choice. On the one hand this demonstrates that the heritage of sport is not an immediate priority for sport governing bodies, however, it also demonstrates that, when the opportunity arises, sport governing bodies recognise the importance of their heritage and provide support to protect it. For example, Mike Rowe, Curator of the World Rugby Museum (WRM), Twickenham explains that “over the course of a century, the collection built up to such a level that in 1972 the Rugby Football Union (RFU) had the idea of opening a museum”.10 It still took eleven years to open the museum because it was not a priority for the RFU, however without the backing of the RFU the collection would have been left homeless. This suggests, therefore, that sport governing bodies have an interest in their sports heritage, but only as a final resort. As discussed further in this chapter, the primary reason for this is due to the pressures of everyday priorities, such as increasing participation in sport, which means for governing bodies, the focus must be on the achievements of the day, rather than the achievements of the past.
However, there is still the question to answer of why it is that museums which tell the entire history of a sport have been created, rather than those sporting collections
9 Henley first hosted the Henley Regatta in 1839 and, apart from during the two World Wars, it has been
held annually ever since. As a consequence, the history of Henley and the sport of rowing have become intertwined.
10 Rowe, M. Curator. World Rugby Museum, Twickenham. Response to the author’s survey. April 1st
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which exist being housed in other museums in a similar fashion to the history of other topics. What is it about sport specifically that meant in order to protect and display this heritage, new specific museums, needed to be created? The answers can most likely be found in an exploration of the early social history museums of the 1970s and 1980s, which were set up to explore heritage deemed to be relevant by the people experiencing it, and often due to a frustration of the lack of inclusion about their heritage in main-stream local authority museums, as discussed in chapter two.11 These museums opened to explore the heritage of the general public, heritage that was not being explored in local authority museums during this time. Figure 14 illustrates that it was only from the 1970s that an increasing interest in opening sport specific museums actually began to take place. This suggests therefore, that those interested individuals which worked to create a sport specific museum about a collection of interest to them, did so because they felt the heritage of their sport was not reflected anywhere else, and as with other fields of social history, decided to establish a museum specifically about sport.
However, closer examination of figure 14 also demonstrates that the museums being created at this time were only concerned with sports which were also considered to be of a middle class origin, such as cricket, tennis, and horse-racing, and thus reflecting actually ‘high’ culture themselves.12 As such, these sports could have been expected to be present within traditional museum displays, as part of the cultural hierarchy that museums of this time hoped to explore. However, because sport specific museums follow the pattern of social history museums, the evidence suggests that, even when the sport was related to high culture, it was still not deemed suitable as a subject matter for museums and creating a sport specific museum presented the only opportunity to preserve and explore the heritage connected with specific sports. The debate concerning sports exclusion from culture in general has existed for some time, and is discussed at length within chapter five. In addition, because of the relationship between these sports and high culture, it is likely the individuals who were involved in
11 Moore, K. Museums & Popular Culture. London:Leicester University Press, 1997. p.78; Howard, S.,
and Hannam, K. ‘The making of two mining museums: Bowes and Beamish North-East England’. pp. 13- 22. in Mining Heritage and Tourism: A Global Synthesis. edited by Collins, M.V., and Joliffe, l. Oxon: Routledge. 2011.
12 Polley, M. Moving the Goalposts: A History of Sport and Society in Britain since 1945. London:
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these sports, were also museum visitors. As such, seeing the lack of discussion of sport in local authority museums, they decided to marry the two themes and create a museum about sport themselves. Conversely, individuals connected to the working class sports would probably not have been traditional museum visitors, as evidenced by the decreasing visitor figures to museums from the lower classes in the 1970s and 1980s discussed in chapter two, and would therefore have been unlikely to consider opening a museum of any kind, irrespective of if it was associated with a sport they enjoyed. Therefore, it was not until the opening of the National Football Museum (NFM) in 2001 that a sport connected to the working classes was given a museum space of its own, and a number of unique factors contributed to provide the right environment for the establishment of this museum.
Thus, the sport specific museums in England to date have been created by the tenacity of individuals, or groups of individuals and by the sport governing body associated with that sport, to house pre-existing sporting collections. The need to protect and preserve the collection has been established and a museum set up to achieve this. However, the aims and objectives of the museums do not stop at this desire purely to provide a home for a collection of objects. Therefore, the next section will explore the findings of the author’s research in relationship to the aims and objectives which the sport specific museums of England aspire to.