Last week, UK arts minister Estelle Morris suggested a distribution problem in England’s museums…with too much stuff hidden in city-based museum storehouses, and not enough out in the fringes. Said she:
”We want to see the cultural centre of gravity start to move from the capital. Part of this could involve sharing works more — the best of our culture should be accessible to all, no matter where they live. There is a clear — and growing — appetite around the country for more ‘serious’ culture while, at the same time, large parts of the collections of some of the major London institutions are rarely seen by the public.”
Among the statistics to prove her point:
- The British Museum has seven million objects in its collection, of which 75,000 are on display
- The National Gallery has 10,500 portraits. Of these 60% are regularly displayed at the National Portrait Gallery or elsewhere.
A spokeswoman for the British Museum cried foul, suggesting that the bulk of things left unseen are either uninteresting to the general public, too fragile to be displayed, or available for viewing by appointment. Said she:
”…everything that is worth seeing is available to the public.”
The debate was sparked by a new report on the future of museums in England, which suggested a critical rethink of how great works are stored, shared, and seen by the public regardless of where they live.
It’s a classic tension in the museum world, between the collection/stewardship of essential elements of arts and artifacts and the public access to those collections. The more publicly a work is shown, the greater the threat to its physical condition…and its availability to future generations. But arts and artifacts left unexperienced can lose their vibrancy and meaning, making them irrelevant to current and future audiences.
It’s also a complex question of ownership. When an individual museum acquires a work, who owns it? Certainly the institution has gained control of the thing itself, but as a public institution, the ownership and rights to the work are really in the public trust. Says the report:
Questions of ownership and use are connected. Within the context of limited resources and broader public benefit, museums’ collections and acquisitions, while remaining in the direct ownership of individual institutions, could also be viewed as contributing to the nation’s ‘public collection’ as a single resource under the custodianship of many individual museums. This would not affect the direct ownership of particular collections, but would encourage their wider use and sharing of expertise.
There are so many issues of industry structure, mission, purpose, and reach in this particular question, it’s bound to have legs for a long-term conversation (already begun long before this report, but wonderfully brought to the front last week).
