Institute of Welsh Affairs

National Museum and National Library founded 100 years ago as an 'anti-British protest'

PRESS RELEASE: IMMEDIATE

The National Museum and National Library of Wales were established 100 years ago as anti-British institutions “founded out of bitter protest at British neglect of all things Welsh”. This is the view of Professor Prys Morgan, a contributor to a new book Myths, Memories and Futures: The National Library and National Museum in the Story of Wales, launched by the Institute of Welsh Affairs today (8 March 2007) to mark the 2007 centenary of the two institutions.

In the book Prys Morgan, Emeritus Professor of History at Swansea University and brother of First Minister Rhodri Morgan, challenges the conventionally held interpretation that the National Library and National Museum were founded as part of a movement seeking parity for Wales with the other British countries at the end of the 19th Century. Instead he says the two institutions “were both fundamentally contrary to the dominant Imperial British culture of the period”:

“Essentially, they form part of that movement of Welshness which arose from what I feel should be called the ‘Age of Anxiety’ in the 1847-50s in the wake of the Blue Books. Utilitarianism, Philistinism, and Anglicisation were rampant, but there was also resistance to all that and an urge to shape a rib cage for nationality. That was the role of both institutions in differing ways. We should note them as exemplars for our own age of devolution, and take pride in them.”

Professor Morgan notes that the National Library and Museum were “the most glorious of a large number of institutions created in the first age of devolution from the 1880s to 1914”, adding that “as Welsh institutions they arise from a romantic vision of the Welsh past and Welsh nationality. In my view they are primarily Welsh not British institutions in their aim and purpose.”

In his contribution Michael Houlihan, Director General of National Museum Wales, says, “Today, in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the national museums are firmly rooted in issues of national identity, national culture and national ownership, articulated in the ways they collect, the exhibitions they mount, and the regional communities they serve. In these countries the creation of national assemblies has further sharpened this definition of a national museum as a nation’s museum.”

NOTE TO EDITORS
The book is being launched at 6pm 8 March at National Museum Wales, at the final lecture in a year-long series, being delivered by Michael Houlihan, Director General, National Museum Wales. For more information contact: John Osmond, Director IWA, 029 2066 6606.