Although government has said that the Walter Roth museum is being relocated to accommodate a department of the Ministry of the Presidency at the Main Street site, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary Clement Rohee yesterday said the “nation deserves an explanation” for the decision.
“Why does Mr Granger want that building? He is allowing our imagination to run wild [and] he should put all this to rest,” Rohee said at the PPP’s weekly press conference at Freedom House, where he noted that it was “amazing” how a museum of such national importance is being treated.
He added that there has been no public reason or explanation from President David Granger for wanting the building to be relocated and he deemed the planned relocation a “devious plan that is fraught with horrendous consequences…,” in light of the fragility of the artifacts housed at the museum.
He added that the museum deserves “some degree of sophistication, unless we’re dealing with a bunch of philistines who have no appreciation whatsoever of the arts and the culture.”
Rohee said he believes it should remain where it is because “that is the best location right now.”
Meanwhile, President Granger has said that it is more than likely the Department of Protocol will be working in the building and he has assured that there would be no damage to the heritage or to the aesthetic significance of the building.
“We did not see it as a problem. We saw it as an improvement in providing access to the Walter Roth Museum. There is not going to be any damage or any diminution of the collections there,” the President said last week.
Although the Ministry of the Presidency had identified the western wing of the National Museum as the new site to house the Walter Roth museum, an assessment has found that the building cannot accommodate the needed extension.
In addition, the top flat of the post office building, which was also examined, has also been found to be unsuitable to accommodate the museum.
Since the government’s announcement, Director of the Museum Jennifer Wishart, in a letter to this newspaper, had indicated that the museum’s collections are very fragile and in fact in 1980 when collections were moved from the National Museum to Walter Roth, there was considerable damage and loss of artifacts.
Wishart, who is the co-founder of the museum along with the late Denis Williams, also said that after the death of Williams when the collections in his home were removed there was significant damage and some had to be dumped as a result of identification and also mixture of collections, as the storage facilities there then, were inadequate.
