BLAISE Museum and two other small museums could be closed under budget cuts.
The proposal is to shut them temporarily and mothball the collections until alternative sources of funding can be found.
But Councillor Mark Weston, leader of the Conservative group on the city council, says they should stay open while other options are explored. Savings from closing them would be a drop in the ocean, he says.
An online petition, Save Our Museums, started by Cllr Weston, had nearly 3,000 signatures as the Voice went to print.
The final decision will be made at a full council meeting at the end of this month.
Addressing a sub committee meeting in January about the planned arts cuts, Lynda Rooke, president of the union Equity, said: “The question you must ask yourselves is, does Bristol want a cultural desert?
She said the amount of annual savings that would be made by closing the museums were “meagre” – £64,000 for Red Lodge, £39,000 for Blaise and £29,000 for Georgian House – compared with the total proposed budget cuts of £43 million.
Cllr Tim Kent (Lib Dem, Hengrove & Whitchurch Park) said: “There must be better options than just saying we are going to lock the doors on the museums. That doesn’t make the costs go away for those buildings or having to look after those collections.
“The idea that we will not reopen those museums is totally unacceptable.”
Sub-committee member Cllr Rob Logan (Labour, Filwood) said: “It seems like such a small saving considering the cultural damage that will be done.t feels nuts to close them while we come up with a plan.
Cllr Jonathan Hucker (Conservative, Stockwood) told the meeting on, January 16: “Given it’s a relatively small saving, it’s something that would be very difficult to support. I’m not convinced that given there would be costs to mothballing the museums that it would really be worth closing them.”
Council leader Cllr Tony Dyer (Green, Harbourside) said the three museums earmarked were only open two-thirds of the year and then only four days a week.
Blaise Museum had 18,000 visitors a year and both Georgian House and Red Lodge between 8,000 and 9,000.
“To put that into perspective, M Shed and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery receive 700,000 visitors per year,” he said.
“We are not looking to sell off any of these properties, in fact for the Georgian House and Red Lodge we cannot sell them off, they have title restrictions that prevent them being sold or redeveloped for other purposes.
“Blaise Castle estate could potentially be sold off or renovated or redesigned in some way but that would be much further down the line if we were to take that course of action.”
He said one option could be to charge an entry fee, although the meeting was told this would not save as much money as the option to close them.
The sub-committee’s comments will go to the strategy & resources committee on February 3 to agree a draft budget for a vote at full council on February 25.
• Visitor figures revealed at another meeting last month showed a drop-off in visitor figures Bristol City Council installed pay-and-display at Blaise car park in March 2022.
Figures reveal that a total of 22,884 people visited the museum in the 12 months that followed, between April 2022 and March 2023. But this tailed off dramatically to 14,207 the following year.
And although it picked up again in 2024/25 to 18,005 visitors, this was nearly 5,000 fewer than in 2022/23.
Includes reporting by Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service