Pricey Chris Bryant,
Congratulations on turning into arts minister. Forgive this unsolicited recommendation on museum coverage. Open letters to new arts ministers have turn into a convention for this column, if solely as a result of the final authorities saved altering them. You’re the tenth in ten years. You’ve already outlasted one among your predecessors, Syed Kamall, who managed a month throughout Liz Truss’s time as prime minister. All people I’ve spoken to is aware of your ardour for the humanities, and needs you the perfect.
Your first process is harm limitation. The sector has not totally recovered from Covid and inflation. Customer numbers are about 15% beneath pre-pandemic ranges. Funding cuts have inhibited restoration; nationally funded museums misplaced 30% final 12 months. For regional museums the state of affairs is graver. Grant-in-aid for Arts Council England has declined by nearly a fifth in actual phrases in 5 years. Native council museum spending is 40% much less per particular person in actual phrases than it was in 2010.
What to do? Extra money could be good, however the Treasury may have different concepts. “Inform establishments to extend their very own income,” they’ll say. The reality is, solely a handful of massive London museums can do that efficiently, and they’re on the restrict of what’s attainable. Monetising public collections all the time creates limitations to public entry. Let’s not have extra embarrassments just like the British Museum’s enterprise with NFTs.
How far ought to UK taxpayers subsidise vacationers?
The Treasury might wish to revisit free museum entry, successful from the final Labour authorities. The query will probably be, how far ought to UK taxpayers subsidise vacationers? Earlier than Covid, nearly half of holiday makers to nationwide museums got here from abroad. For some London museums the determine was greater than 70%. Mark Jones, the previous director of the British Museum and the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A), not too long ago advocated charging abroad guests. However there are disagreeable sensible difficulties in attempting to establish foreigners on the museum door. The director of the V&A, Tristram Hunt, has recommended a vacationer tax in London, ring-fenced for tradition spending.
Within the absence of extra money, your finest lever for change is coverage. Partly due to ministerial churn on the Division for Digital, Tradition, Media and Sport (DCMS), the museum sector has not been reformed for years. Fortuitously, your celebration’s detailed pre-election arts manifesto, “Creating Development”, included quite a lot of glorious insurance policies.
On the coronary heart of Labour’s imaginative and prescient was growing entry to the humanities and museums for everybody. I used to be glad to see step one right here concerned placing the humanities again into training. Our museums are nicely positioned to assist do that, with extraordinary collections in each group and among the most devoted employees you’ll discover wherever.
The dedication to introduce an open knowledge coverage will carry museums totally into the web world. Many smaller UK museums, like Derby Museum, already do that, boosting consciousness of their collections and tutorial analysis. However a few of our main museums are caught within the age of dial-up (strive zooming in on a Turner on Tate’s web site) and cost lecturers and teachers excessive charges to breed publicly owned artwork. Open knowledge will carry museums and the DCMS consistent with open entry coverage at universities and the Division for Schooling.
The requirement for publicly funded nationwide museums to “improve their regional and nationwide engagement and loans to public areas” may very well be probably the most transformative arts coverage of current instances. Nationwide museums have turn into coy about simply how a lot artwork they’ve in retailer, and the huge sums it prices to maintain it there. Please launch a assessment into this “Gollumisation” of our nationwide assortment—it is going to establish how a lot artwork may simply as fortunately cling in a regional museum, library or classroom. Don’t give the Nationwide Gallery a free cross as a result of it lent 12 work to museums throughout the UK this 12 months—ask why it wasn’t a much bigger programme, just like the 52 work they despatched on a tour of Asia in 2023-24.
These insurance policies may have an preliminary value. Fortunately, the DCMS is the one division with its personal income stream, the Nationwide Lottery. The humanities and heritage get about £350m every. Historically, Lottery funding needed to be “further” to common funding, however that boundary is now blurred. Preserve blurring it. Higher to provide a regional museum a brand new lease on life with (say) a five-year renewal grant in partnership with a nationwide museum, than giving a London museum a brand new entrance door it doesn’t want.
Take into account creating a brand new physique combining each regional and nationwide museums, to extra simply share experience and funding
How finest to implement these insurance policies? Your assessment of the Arts Council permits a radical rethinking of how we fund our museums. The prevailing mannequin makes little sense. Nationwide museums get comparatively secure funding via the DCMS and a direct line to your desk, whereas regional museums like these in Birmingham rely on native authorities (a few of them bankrupt) and restricted illustration inside the Arts Council. Take into account creating a brand new physique combining each regional and nationwide museums, to extra simply share experience, funding and collections throughout the nation. Ideally this could have buy-in from the Division for Schooling.
Good luck!
