Theatre Museum to close

It's been a long slow death, but now the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden is set to close. On The Guardian's Culture Vulture blog, Michael Billington laments its passing.

The V&A have said they will re-house the Museum's collection and ultimately open a new gallery in South Kensington. But it will be impossible to store everything under one roof. And the whole point of having a Museum in Covent Garden was that it was at the very heart of Theatreland itself, and shared in all its glitz and glamour.

So the Museum's impending closure, as it reaches its 20th year, is devastating news. A reminder that, although the British have a genius for making theatre, they have little desire to celebrate it.