Welsh fears for Philip Jones Griffiths collection

According to The Western Mail Frontline Club Honorary member Philip Jones Griffiths spent the last seven years of his life trying to find a permanent home for his photos. However it appears he failed to reach an agreement with a number of Welsh institutions including Bangor, Aberystwyth and Newport Universities and the National Library of Wales before his death earlier this week,

[Philip] told the Western Mail last year, “I don’t want a room, only to have the foundation lose control, with the university controlling everything. It would be self-financing because my images are constantly being used around the world and constantly generating money. The relationship would be mutually beneficial, but I want a 99-year lease on the space and people are telling me that is wishful thinking.”
Gwyn Jenkins, director of collection services at the National Library of Wales, said the negotiations stalled because of the scale of Mr Jones Griffiths’s ambitions for his legacy. He said the photographer wanted not only an exhibition space, but a newly-built educational facility for his work, preferably in a rural location in North Wales.He said there was a fear that such plans would have required a large slice of public subsidy and would not have been entirely self-financing as Mr Jones Griffiths imagined.
He said, “It’s exactly the same scenario which makes the Assembly and institutions like universities and us a bit wary about being involved with the sort of set-up which might swallow up a lot of funding.” link