Sharing Treasures

Launched in 2001, the scheme is funded by the Welsh Assembly Government and administered by CyMAL: Museums Archives and Libraries Wales.

Our aim is to broaden access to national collections by enabling local museums to build sustainable partnerships with us.

Through the Sharing Treasures programme, we have been working with:

• Brecknock Museum & Gallery
• Oriel Ynys Mon (Llangefni)
• Wrexham County Borough Museum
• Pontypool Museum
• Carmarthenshire County Museum
• Scolton Manor Museum (Haverfordwest)
• Abergavenny Museum
• Llandudno Museum
• Chepstow Museum
• Rhyl Museum
• Rhayader Museum and Gallery

Project feedback

Abergavenny Museum received a Sharing Treasures Award of £58,000 between 2006 and 2008.

With additional funds provided by Monmouthshire County Council, it enabled us to put on the exhibition ‘A World Untouched: The Artists of Capel y ffin. Eric Gill, David Jones and Edgar Holloway’.

The short/medium term result of the project was a high quality bilingual exhibition of nationally important art work, opened by Welsh Assembly Minister Alun Fred in summer 2009, which ran for three months.

The long-term result is a refurbished gallery with greatly improved facilities, enabling our own collections to be kept in superior conditions and further high profile artefacts to be borrowed in the future.

The ability to secure exhibitions of national importance increases our ability to attract a wider audience to the museum and improve visitor figures. National Museum Cardiff was the main partner in this project.

The scheme was not only a means of borrowing objects from their collections, but a way of developing links and contacts with other departments such as marketing and publicity, technical and conservation.

The project was an opportunity for the museum to drastically improve its facilities which included display housing and cases, gallery lighting, environmental conditions and security.

The publicity generated for the exhibition was on a much greater scale than we could ever hope to achieve without such a scheme. We attracted visitors to the exhibition who would not otherwise have visited the museum, and were also able to increase retail sales.

Rachael Rogers, Abergavenny Museum