The Textile Museum of Canada will shut its doorways on 16 February, with a re-opening date nonetheless to be decided however tentatively anticipated in September. Funding is a significant concern, together with accessibility—the constructing’s elevator is in want of great restore. Board chair Urmi Desai, who has been concerned with the downtown Toronto museum for practically a decade, instructed the Toronto Star the constructing is “not protected”.
“We had been already going to shut as a result of elevator,” Desai tells The Artwork Newspaper. She estimates it could take at the least six to eight weeks to deal with the elevator downside. Information of its imminent closure for greater than six months has triggered a surge of curiosity within the museum. “It’s heartwarming,” Desai says. “It jogs my memory of why we work so laborious.”
The museum, based in 1975, was initially positioned additional uptown in Mirvish Village and was often called the Canadian Museum of Carpets and Textiles. It relocated to its present web site simply north of Toronto Metropolis Corridor in 1989 and now boasts a everlasting assortment of greater than 15,000 items from around the globe, spanning 2,000 years of textile historical past. Amongst its most treasured gadgets are a salmon pores and skin swimsuit from China, Nazca fragments from Peru and a hooked rug by the artist Florence Ryder of the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation that comes with conventional Sioux designs.
In a letter to the museum’s members, guests and supporters, Desai touched on a few of the different points dealing with the museum and shared by related organisations. “Together with different cultural establishments, the Museum has been confronted with the numerous problem of regaining and increasing our audiences following the Covid-19 pandemic shutdowns,” she wrote.
As she elaborates to The Artwork Newspaper: “We by no means totally recovered from Covid—everybody began staying house extra. We did OK with our viewers numbers, however they’re not rising.” She provides she want to see a rise of even 10%, including that “folks do come out for particular occasions”.
Desai added in her letter: “In response, over two years in the past, the museum launched an bold enlargement of our exhibition programming and fundraising to draw new audiences. Sadly, modifications in viewers behaviours and funding priorities have resulted in an sudden shortfall in our funds, leading to working constraints.”
Concerning these modifications in viewers behaviour, Desai tells The Artwork Newspaper: “A part of this concern is that audiences have modified partly for extra preferences for digital choices, however we shall be analyzing this in additional element as a part of our subsequent steps.”
She additionally elaborates on the wanted constructing upkeep work: “The primary merchandise requiring restore is an elevator, which given the structure of the constructing, makes it accessible. In any other case, intensive use of stairs is required.” The museum’s primary public space is up a number of flights of stairs. The museum has been awarded a grant to cowl these bills.
The museum’s web site will proceed to supply on-line entry to its assortment, whereas onsite excursions and assortment visits shall be by appointment solely. It was one of many first museums to digitise its total assortment, based on Desai. “We’re one of many largest totally digital digitised collections on-line in Canada,” she instructed the Star.
