The “London” Divide Is Showing Up In Museums As Well

It is a favourite hobby horse of many social groups that London and the South East gets the lion’s share of anything positive that is happening, whether it be events or finance. Those that live in those “favoured” areas counter by suggesting that their corner of the country is now the power house of modern Britain, leading the way with modern technology which is taking over as the creators of wealth as heavy industry dies away.

Whatever the pros and cons of these respective arguments, it appears from latest reports that this great divide is now showing itself in the more genteel world of museums.
There is a growing gulf between museums in London and elsewhere in the UK that has left some venues struggling to host exhibitions and facing closure, so says David Anderson, the Museums Association president.

Provincial museums coming a poor second

"We're beginning to go into a different world where the temperature's going right up” he warned. "Museums are beginning to close sites, they're beginning to reduce staffing."

He was speaking at the association's annual conference, and warming to his theme, he said the risk of closures would get "a lot worse". A survey that was commissioned by the association last month found that 23% of venues had seen their incomes drop by 10% in the previous year, while 21% said they had cut at least one in 10 staff.

Local councils in England had cut their funding to museums by an average of 11% in 2011-12, according to figures released by the association. "That's a dramatic drop," said Mr Anderson, whose day job is as director of the National Museum Wales

He used the example of an unnamed but "reasonably large-sized regional museum" which had to turn down a free visiting exhibition from a national venue because it had cut staff and could not afford to install it. "That's the canary in the mine, that one," he said. "There are things happening now that we've not seen before, in this generation anyway."

A recent report has led to the matter becoming headline news, when it was shown that cultural venues in London receive £69 of central government funding per resident, compared with £4.60 per head in the rest of England. Calling for funding to made on a more level playing field, Mr. Anderson also said that museums could do more to persuade politicians why they are "so critically important".

Questioned about what was likely to happen if the current trend continued, he replied: "We are going to end up very probably with a large focus on a few metropolitan areas and a tiny distribution of resource elsewhere.

"Rather like the financial sector has sucked resource into London and exists in a world of its own, we're going to find that the arts world is in the process currently of sucking resource out of the nations and regions and into London, and a few other centres like Edinburgh, which are fairly wealthy as well.

"You'll have a great separation. The wealthy institutions will get wealthier and the poor institutions will get poorer. That's exactly what will happen for the next two decades. It's slowly been happening - now it's gathering speed."

Some venues are even under threat, such as the Walsall Museum and also the Whithorn Trust, which looks after historical sites in south-west Scotland, while the Science Museums Group had only just rescinded a threat to close one of its attractions in either Bradford, Manchester or York.

Meanwhile, new shadow culture minister Helen Goodman told delegates she was "really appalled" at the report on the difference between arts and culture funding in London and the rest of England, adding that any future Labour government would not increase arts funding in the first year after taking office.

"You will all readily accept that my colleagues who deal with the bedroom tax, disability, care for the elderly, to name but three, are ahead of me in the queue to [shadow chancellor] Ed Balls' door," she said. "So I cannot promise you new money in year one. Hard choices will still be needed. But I think we must and can look after and use the assets we do have much better."

The conference in Liverpool was also used to announce that the association had expelled Croydon Council for planning to sell 24 valuable Chinese ceramics. The council hopes the sale will raise money towards redeveloping Fairfield Halls, a 50-year-old concert hall, theatre and gallery.
But selling items from a museum's collection is against the association's rules in most cases.