Most people would assume that Apsley House, home to Swindon's museum and art collections, would be reopening on 19 July, however this is not currently the case.
A report (Cabinet Member Decision Note) has been submitted to Swindon Borough Council recommending the permanent closure and disposal of Apsley House in Bath Road, the home of the Swindon Museum and the "magnificent and important" (to quote SBC) Swindon Collection of Twentieth Century British Art. The plan is to put most of the art and artefacts into store to await the construction of a new Art Gallery in the proposed Cultural Quarter near Swindon Station. There is as yet no funding for the Cultural Quarter and the suggested timeline for completing it is around 10 years.
There is a campaign to get Apsley House reopened and to keep it open until the collections can be put on public display in a more suitable location. There can be no certainty that if the doors remain closed now the collections will ever be reassembled. The campaign group is "Save Our Museum and Art Gallery" (SOMAG).
To publicise our campaign, we have started a petition:
https://www.change.org/SaveSwindonMuseumandArtGallery if you haven't already done so, please consider signing the petition. We also have a Facebook page and are holding an event on Monday 19 July outside Apsley House, please see the poster below and consider coming along:
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