BBC examines museum disposals

BBC's Newsnight has examined the way that museums dispose of items from storage.

It said that around 90 per cent of collections are gone unseen by the public.

However, when a museum tries to sell items, it can be met with a public outcry.

Southampton City Council has had to put on hold the sale of a Rodin sculpture to fund a Titanic museum after opposition from the public and the creative industry.

But some institutions such as Horsham Museum in Sussex has a policy in place on what can be sold.

Curator at Horsham Jeremy Knight told the programme that the museum will only dispose of items that are not connected to the region, in order to fund for displays that have a local relevance.

'Shelley is the most important person born in Horsham and we had nothing on him when I first came,' he said.

'By disposing of items that were irrelevant we've managed to build up one of the largest collections on Shelley in the country, which is used internationally by scholars and by local schoolchildren.'