Newcastle Maritime Museum Society has been offered an ultimatum after the group back flipped on a promise to donate its collection to City of Newcastle.
Council has threatened to retire trusteeship of the former museum's collection if the Society Board doesn't transfer ownership of the collection by Monday, August 12th.
"The back flip by the new board has forced our hand," said City of Newcastle CEO Jeremy Bath.
"We will retire trusteeship next Monday if the Newcastle Maritime Museum Society continues to recognise the agreement reached with the former Board in May last year."
This comes after the recently elected Maritime Museum Society Board told council it will not honour an agreement made by its predecessors to donate the collection to Newcastle Museum unless several new conditions are met.
These conditions include a commitment to provided storage and curatorial facilities indefinitely as well as a world-class maritime display facility and a five-star, themed hotel to be built on the backs of ratepayer contributions.
Newcastle Museum Director Julie Baird has also condemned the society's conditions, saying expecting ratepayers to fund the facility is "unacceptable".
"The Board's condition that it transfer all costs and responsibilities for the collection to ratepayers, yet somehow retain ownership and curatorial control for the foreseeable future, is both financially unsupportable and unacceptable to Newcastle Museum." said Ms Baird.
The Newcastle Maritime Museum Society's President Bob Cook says the organisation simply believes the artefacts warrant a more appropriate setting than council's proposal for a singular display at the Newcastle Museum.
"The fundamental concern is of the society is that the maritime collection is so significant and big, and so important to Newcastle history, that it deserves to be exhibited in a big way on the foreshore in a maritime setting." said Mr Cook.
"Not as a room inside the Newcastle museum which is already full and has no appropriate space for the maritime collection,
We believe that Newcastle deserves better than a room in the Museum for the maritime collection."
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| Photo: Newcastle Herald |
