I suppose I first became aware of Julian Spalding, the British art museum director, when I went to Glasgow some years ago and visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. I hated it, and I blamed Spalding, who was then the director of art galleries for Glasgow. Kelvingrove’s collections–which include Dali’s Christ of St John of the Cross, Rembrandt’s A Man in Armour, and works by van Gogh and Monet, among other things–had been reinstalled for maximum tourist appeal, in themed galleries with dumbed-down labels. The lobby was like a playground for kids, who were running around, and the noise level was very high. Forget about a sanctuary; Kelvingrove was like a noisy New York City restaurant that required shouting for communication.
Now I see that Spalding, who was said to be responsible for what people termed was this “populist” approach, is far from the knee-jerk person I suspected him to be. My apologies.
In his latest salvo, Spalding takes on the art-world powers in the U.K. In a speech he was set to deliver today, according to The Guardian, he is expected “to launch a ferocious attack on work that ‘rejoices in being incomprehensible to all but a few insiders’.” The article continues:
In a lecture on “the purpose of the arts today  Julian Spalding...will say that the public purse should only fund work that is “both popular and profound, as truly great art isâ€. He will also criticise the supporting of works that appeal “to a self-congratulatory in-groupâ€.
By 2015, the Arts Council will have “invested†£2.4bn of funds from the government and the National Lottery over a four-year period. According to Spalding, state arts funding should be restricted to subsidising “peaks in our shared culture†– such as King Lear, and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony – rather than the “rarefied delights†of artists such as Jeff Koons and Hirst, who he says create “sham, glittering ornaments of an amusement-arcade cultureâ€.
And here’s a passage I like:
Spalding said that great art cannot be predetermined to tick boxes on funding application forms: “No government money should be spent on trying to influence the creation of art. The arts have to be personally felt.â€
Right now, in this country, we have a lot of grants being offered to artists making socially conscious art, or art with a social purpose. I doubt, as I think Spalding would, that artists trying to please a funder on this will make great art.
Spalding goes on to blast a few works by name and artists. Read them here. I leave decisions on those works in particular up to each of you.
Overall, though the U.S. has a different system of funding for museums, mostly, I think he makes points well worth heeding here.