Here's a weird thing - in 1999 the Museum Of the Moving Image in Waterloo closed down for major redevelopment and refurbishment. There were plans to build a new building for it and all kinds of stuff was going to happen. It was due to reopen in 2003.
Well, it's now the autumn of that year, and nothing. In fact, the offical website now no longer exists, and if you go to its old URL you just get redirected to the front page of the British Film Institute, and there's no mention of MOMI anywhere on their site, as if it had never existed. I can find nothing on Google about what has happened to it, all the "About London"-type tourist websites claim it is due to reopen about now or are really out of date and claim it's still open. I did find one unoffical MOMI website that gave the impression it has closed for good, however.
So what's up here?
― Chriddof (Chriddof), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)
Look here:
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=342543&host=5&dir=211It was a grand idea to have a Museum of the Moving Image. But MOMI closed down, 31 August 1999, and now the British Film Institute has conceded that we cannot expect to see its like again. There are grander ideas afoot – like moving most of the BFI to a nearby South Bank location – but those schemes are in trouble, too, or hanging in the air. Altogether, it's not the most auspicious way of greeting the 50th birthday of the NFT.
On the other hand, this nation's celebration of film has always had problems. For 50 years, the NFT has dwelled in what felt like temporary housing, pushed under the arches of Waterloo Bridge. But as time goes by, so that cramped home begins to seem secure and natural – it can hardly be lost without the abandonment of the bridge.
Harsh economics tell the story of MOMI's decline. When it opened, in 1988, it had 520,000 visitors a year. By the financial year 1998-1999, that number had slipped to 325,000. That's all the sadder in view of the pioneering stance MOMI had taken (there is still nothing comparable in Los Angeles, the city that ought to have a great museum for the culture of film).
― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 14:35 (twenty-two years ago)
i'm gutted cos i never went but always meant to (so it's all my fault) - i had been wondering myself what had happened to it
― stevem (blueski), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 14:53 (twenty-two years ago)
The best things I remember about the MOMI was the bit where you lay on a strip of blue and the screen above would show you flying over the city, Superman style.
That and the Western Set room, when the "director" made 10-year old Matt DC walk through the saloon doors about eight times.
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)
Fuck, that's a real shame. Thanks for digging up that page, Jerry.
It's really sad we'll probably never see those exhibits again - like that couch shaped like a pair of lips made by Salvador Dali, and the Kino train, and that little room where you could watch all sorts of short films, including this marvellous abstract animation that was like a moving Kandinsky painting...
― Chriddof (Chriddof), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 15:32 (twenty-two years ago)
oh, i used to go everytime i was in london! :(
― lolita corpus (lolitacorpus), Wednesday, 24 September 2003 16:39 (twenty-two years ago)