Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010

1. Centre for Museology Autumn Seminars 2010 Monday 11th October 2010, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10 Suzanne MacLeod, Deputy Head of School & Senior Lecturer, University of Leicester Ration Cards, Coupon Hordes and Art: Occupation by Friendly Forces and the Battle for Liberation at the Walker Art Gallery 1939 – 1951 This paper explores the period from 1939 to 1951 in the architectural history of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. As the threat of war loomed, Liverpool councillors and the various services such as Fire and Police made arrangements for what would happen in an emergency and, in late 1938, it was agreed that should war break out, the Walker Art Gallery building would be handed over to the Ministry of Food for administration purposes. When Chamberlain announced that Britain was at war on September 3rd 1939, the clearing and handover of the Walker to the war effort was finalised without delay. The shipping of the collections to country houses and other safe havens was completed and on the 4th September 1939, only one day after the official outbreak of war, the Ministry of Food took occupation of the Gallery. A short six years after the Gallery’s renovation and extension, the building was given over to a new role and a whole new range of uses. Through this use and for a full decade, the building would be transformed into a very different place and the activity of the small Gallery staff would be sidelined to a few offices in the building. What emerges from the evidence is a picture of a Gallery Director freed from the constraints of managing a building, who grasped his opportunity to develop innovative and creative projects and build, over the next twelve years, a career as the leading provincial gallery director. More than this, the war saw Lambert and his old and new colleagues on the Gallery and Ministry of Food staffs emerge as brave and dedicated defenders of the buildings along William Brown Street, heroic figures in many senses. Suzanne MacLeodis Deputy Head of School and Senior Lecturer in the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. She is Managing Editor of Museum and Society and is currently writing an architectural history of the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool: Occupying the Architecture of the Gallery: spatial, social and professional change at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 1877-2002. Everyone Welcome! For more info, email Louise.tythacott@manchester.ac.uk