Memorandum submitted by Arts Council England
INTRODUCTION
1. Arts Council England works to get more
art to more people in more places. We develop and promote the
arts across England, acting as an independent body at arm's length
from government. Between 2006 and 2008, we will invest £1.1
billion of public money from government and the National Lottery
in supporting the arts. This is the bedrock of support for the
arts in England.
2. After our submission to the inquiry on
Protecting and Preserving our Heritage, we are delighted
that the committee has now decided to focus on museums and galleries,
cultural property and archives. The committee's decision is particularly
timely for us because Our agenda for the arts commits us
to prioritising the contemporary visual arts. In line with this
commitment, we recently published Turning Point, our 10-year
strategy for the contemporary visual arts. The main emphasis of
the strategy is on linking contemporary art with art from the
past and heritage and it sets the development of regional collections
as a priority.
3. As we set out in our submission to the
committee's previous inquiry, we believe public collections must
fully represent contemporary art and practice and contemporary
culture to ensure we leave as rich a legacy as we inherited. This
submission examines the major and pressing issues that need to
be addressed.
4. Collections can be national or regional,
public or private. They may or may not be based in a building.
They cut across the fields of heritage and contemporary. Arts
Council England is part of a wider sector including government-funded
national institutions such as Tate and other national museums,
libraries and archives other national heritage bodies, regional
museums run by local authority leisure services, university museums
and galleries, heritage agencies, private trusts and foundations,
the commercial art market and the publishing industry. Within
this wider sector, we work in partnership with the Museums, Libraries
and Archives Council (MLA), the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), local
authorities and the national museums and collections.
5. We are concerned that for most museums
active collecting is not a priority. The Art Fund Survey: The
Collecting Challenge (2006) reported that of the 305 returns
(one sixth of accredited museums) just 2% prioritised collecting,
60% were unable to allocate any funds to collecting and 51% said
that lack of funding and lack of expertise were the main reasons
for the lack of active acquisition. 85% said that shortage of
space for display or storage is a serious obstacle to collecting.
FUNDING
6. Current resources for acquisitions, at
a national and at a regional level, mean that works of art, including
contemporary artworks, are leaving the UK. As the Director of
the Victoria & Albert Museum argues in a recent paper "in
real terms the public funding devoted to acquisition in 2004-05
was worth only 13% of that available in 1980-81." The committee
will know of the funding pressures facing local authorities. Museums,
as non-statutory services, continue to face a squeeze on their
resources which may limit the benefits of new DCMS investment
through the MLA Renaissance programme. Our research across the
visual arts demonstrates that operating budgets and staffing are
inadequate for the task of addressing both public access programmes
and the longstanding issues of documentation, new acquisitions
and collections care. Indeed, it was claimed recently that some
major regional galleries have exhibition budgets of less than
£20,000 a year. The findings on leadership and workforce
mobility and diversity also indicate a serious barrier to the
growth of dynamic contemporary collections which reflect contemporary
Britain: 93% of the visual arts workforce is white, 75% is female,
65% is aged under 45 and the representation of black and minority
ethnic groups is low at 5%.
7. The Contemporary Art Society's Special
Collections Scheme demonstrated the impact that new investment
in collections can have. The scheme, which was supported through
Arts Council Lottery funds, £2.5 million over five years,
led to 600 acquisitions for regional collections but it was time
limited and involved only 15 museums and galleries. This is an
issue we raised when, earlier this year, we made our successful
bid to the DCMS to remain as a Lottery Good Cause. We would like
to develop the concept much further and create a long-term opportunity
for many more museums and galleries. Our focus on the contemporary
would work in tandem with the Heritage Lottery Fund's existing
support for works over 10 years old.
GROWING PRIVATE
PATRONAGE
8. As we mentioned in our earlier submission,
we would invite the committee consider the recommendations made
by Sir Nicholas Goodison in his 2003 report Securing the best
for our museums: private giving and government support, particularly
those relating to increasing the funding of the National Heritage
Memorial Fund to £20 million and to lifetime giving. On this
second point, the committee may wish to consider how Ireland and
Australia have dealt with this issue in their tax systems which
offer a different approach to that of the United States.
MATCHING FUNDING
WITH EXPERTISE
9. Turning Point—our 10-year
strategy for the contemporary visual arts—was published
in June 2006. Developed with an advisory group of senior representatives
from across the visual arts, including the museums and heritage
sectors, it was informed by substantial research and consultation.
This argued for greater linkages between the historical and the
contemporary and for the integration of planning and investment
in the visual arts. The strategy sets out priorities to address
significant challenges, including developing regional collections,
over the long term.
10. England's museums and galleries have
excelled in opening up access to their collections and in their
work with young people, paralleling work that we have undertaken
across the arts sector. However, as the committee will be aware
from our submission to its previous inquiry, we are concerned
that regional collections in England do not represent the art
of our time and cannot compare with collections in the Netherlands,
France and Germany.
11. Although funding is a major issue, building
collections in England comparable with our European counterparts
must start with attracting and retaining expertise in contemporary
art that would encourage greater collaboration among museums,
galleries and other cultural bodies and, importantly, lever in
funds for acquisitions from trusts and foundations to augment
public financing.
BUILDING EXPERTISE
12. Museums and galleries that are accessible
and have strong exhibition and public programmes of education
and learning depend on well-managed collections that both preserve
the past and reflect contemporary culture. Successive reports,
most recently the Museums Association's Collections for the
Future focus on the challenges of collection management and
offer some pragmatic solutions.
13. New ways of working in the museums and
gallery sector, especially through the new investment of the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council's Renaissance programme and the
new hub structure, have succeeded in advancing access and learning.
Barriers to the strategic development of contemporary collections
management remain in the form of the expertise at the disposal
of museum and gallery staff. One solution may be to bring together
the visual arts organisations in a region so that museums and
galleries can benefit from a wider range of expertise and experience.
14. To address this issue, we have convened
a Regional Collections Group. As well as overseeing the set-up
of an MLA Specialist Sector Network, the Group will test the feasibility
of regional consortia of visual arts organisations coming together
to share expertise and resources to commission and acquire new
work. A model for this work could be the consortium formed by
Bristol Museums and Galleries with Arts Council-funded visual
arts organisations in Bristol. Similarly, in the East Midlands,
with funding from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, we are
leading the Museummaker initiative where 19 museums are collaborating
in commissioning contemporary crafts.
ACCESSING OUR
COLLECTIONS
15. A national strategy for developing regional
contemporary collections requires a database of current holdings
and new public and private partnerships to lever new investment
for acquisition and for storage. Many collections are not fully
documented, which means that museums and galleries are often unable
to find out what works are available for loans. We are working
with MLA and Tate to set up a database of current holdings of
work post-1970 to be completed in 2007.
16. Ideally, collections should be appropriately
displayed and where they are stored, they should be accessible.
The lack of adequate storage for museum collections is a serious
barrier to collecting contemporary work, which can include large
and complex installations. The DCMS paper Measurement and Improvement
Collection Storage Excellence Study (1999) and the HLF report
Museum Needs Assessments (2002) acknowledged the problem
and the need for collaborative solutions. As part of its management
of the Arts Council Collection, the Hayward Gallery runs two accessible
storage and handling facilities: for sculpture, at the Yorkshire
Sculpture Park, the capital cost of which was part funded by the
Henry Moore Foundation, and, for two-dimensional work, in London.
17. The national and regional collections
are our national inheritance and will form part of our legacy.
Their cost and their effective management is both a national and
regional responsibility. We believe there is also the potential
for commercial private sector partnership but this requires storage
strategies and audits of space requirements which need new public
investment. An exemplar is the Museums and Galleries of Northern
Ireland, which has conducted a full audit with the Northern Ireland
Audit Office and have completed a storage planning strategy and
negotiated provision with a private supplier.
18. As we mentioned in our submission to
the committee's previous inquiry, the creative industries too
can help bring collections closer to people and make them more
relevant both to their lives and to the way in which they perceive
themselves and their communities. We are working with the BBC
to provide online content for the forthcoming BBC 1 series Simon
Schama's The Power of Art which engages contemporary artists
to direct viewers to their own regional museum collections. The
digitisation of publicly funded collections and archives will
broaden their availability, widen access and bring heritage closer
to people. The Arts Council Collection will shortly be online
and the Hayward is seeking further trust funding to develop the
site.
19. Our partnership with the National Film
and TV Archive and the University of Westminster will provide
online access for researchers to the Arts Council's film archive.
From 1953 to 1999, the Arts Council commissioned or produced 485
films recording all aspects of—mainly contemporary British—art.
The collection, including rare material about individual artists,
writers and architects as well as films on particular art movements,
will provide an invaluable public research resource.
CONSERVING CULTURAL
PROPERTIES
20. It is the responsibility of the present
to conserve for future generations a record of our contemporary
culture and how it has been created. This legacy is to be found
increasingly in records of the creative process across the art
forms as well as the results of that creativity. In the same way
that we must conserve great art and architecture for our appreciation
now and in the future, we must collect and give access to material
on what inspired the people who made them and how they worked.
21. The need to safeguard significant buildings
and works of art for the nation is widely acknowledged and systems
such as the Reviewing Committee on the Export of Works of Art
exist to ensure this but too often fail as market values exceed
the ability of public collections to raise the necessary funds.
This is now regarded as ineffective and the number of cases now
referred is tiny, less than 1% of items for which an export licence
is requested. This is one of several challenges we would bring
to the committee's attention. Film, oral and sound records provide
an invaluable resource to people seeking to understand not only
what inspired artists and creative people but also how they worked
and related to what was going on around them. All too often, when
an artist or architect dies, while key examples of their work
may be conserved, their archives and material relating to their
working practices are lost. An example is the archive of the great
British architect James Stirling, which was documented with a
grant from Arts Council England. The archive was later sold to
the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
2 October 2006
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