Examination of Witness (Questions 360
- 368)
WEDNESDAY 10 MAY 2000
DR NEIL
CHALMERS, MR
LEN POLE
AND MS
SHARON PAGE
Derek Wyatt
360. If I understood Bruce Chatwin's book, Song
Lines, with respect to the Aborigines, they do not actually
follow laws and customs. They do not accept any of the ways in
which we currently perceive these things legally. One is on the
M1, one is on the M8. That is the issue for the indigenous tribes
all over the world. They do not accept our values.
(Ms Page) Indeed.
361. And therefore where can we have this debate?
We acquire the things, we own some of their things, so there is
not a middle way because they do not even accept that we do not
accept that. How can there be a middle way?
(Mr Pole) If I may put in a discussion point, speaking
anthropologically, there are a whole variety of ways and if we
are looking at one extreme that you have mentioned, then there
may be some difficulties there but I think we have to try to develop
more supple concepts of ownership and relationship between museums
in this country or in other countries that have responsibility
for these collections and their originating communities, and it
does seem to me that by applying this in a more general and generous
way we should be able to come to some kind of arrangement which
does find some kind of balancing point between the competing requirements.
362. You have said you have spent two years
cataloguing two million objects, was it?
(Dr Chalmers) This was in fact about 450 objects from
Australia and the Torres Straights and a few thousand objects
from other parts of the world.
363. And that took you two years?
(Dr Chalmers) Yes.
364. And the cost of that was what?
(Dr Chalmers) I am not giving a considered view. We
are talking about, say, £50,000; more than that, £60,000.
365. Given that the sports strategy just announced
for the first time ever that it is actually going to ask how many
playing fields we have, which we do not know, incredibly, here
we are saying sort of out loud that there ought to be some sort
of audit of these things and you are saying you have got 68 million
in the Natural History Museum, the total number in the United
Kingdom is, I do not know, 500 million, and then you add Europe,
this is overwhelming. It just cannot be done. Is that what you
are really saying?
(Dr Chalmers) I am saying it cannot be done today
or within the foreseeable future. The only way is to identify
your top priority areas and say, "That is where we put our
efforts and money."
366. Do you wish that to come from the Government?
The New Opportunities Fund, if I give you one example, from the
National Lottery there is a digital fee in there of £50 million
that people can apply for to digitise their library or their art
collection. We could, if we wanted to, visit the Lottery in due
course and say, "This is such a big thing, we cannot persuade
the Treasury", or whoever it is, but we might be able to
look at the Lottery. What sort of figure is it, are you saying
is it £1 billion or are you saying it is £500 million
in the United Kingdom?
(Dr Chalmers) I have never done a calculation across
the entire museum community. If we wish to catalogue digitally
our entire collection in the Natural History Museum, at the rate
we are going it would take us about 300 years. That is a phenomenal
rate. We are digitising at a phenomenal rate and we are adding
to the collection at a phenomenal rate. The cost of that is astronomical.
If one is going to talk realistically one ought to be talking
in hundreds of millions of pounds, I think.
367. Is it your job to start to analyse collections
across Britain and say, "Director, we really need you to
get hold of that collection and in three years time please give
us the whole archive background to it?" What are you trying
to do in this area?
(Dr Chalmers) Our job is not to direct, it is to advise.
We are an advisory group and our job is, first of all, to advise
when these guidelines were drafted and to make comments as representatives
of the museum community. Secondly, to look at the need for a resource
centre, and advise and help the museum community as these issues
continue. Our job is in no way to direct museums or galleries
around the country into specific courses of action.
368. Do you see that as the Minister for the
Arts job?
(Dr Chalmers) If anybody is going to be in a position
to give advice or direction it will have to come through the new
MLAC/Resource body, whether they will do that and exactly how
they might do it is an open question, because they have only been
set up very recently. In the end it will come down to a closer
working relationship between the various parts of the museum sector,
which is somewhat fragmented at the moment.
Chairman: You have satisfied everybody.
Thank you very much indeed, very helpful.
|
