ARTS

Museums

No more movable feasts?

James Hamilton investigates the Government's threat to touring exhibitions Tucked in at the bottom edge of the back page of a press release from the Office of Arts and Libraries, and perhaps expecting to be overlooked, is one of the shortest-sighted government proposals since Cromwell sold off King Charles's art collection. The good news in the announce- ment, that the Government is to take over the funding of the Horniman and Geffrye Museums in London, masks the disclosure that the Arts Minister Tim Renton has accepted the Wilding Report's recommen- dation that the Travelling Exhibitions Unit of the Museums and Galleries Commission be wound up.

The Unit, set up in 1989, has a present annual budget of E150,000 from which it distributes grants to organisers of exhibi- tions of museum objects that propose to tour to two or more venues in different parts of the country. Current exhibitions that were given their travelling ticket by the Unit include the outstanding The New Look: Design in the Fifties organised by Manchester City Art Galleries and opening this week in Glasgow, Country House Light- ing from Leeds, travelling on to Brighton, and Mr Greathead's Lifeboats from Tyne and Wear Museums. The Unit's support is restricted to exhibitions of social and indus- trial history, archaeology and decorative art, areas that are not covered by any other government-funded scheme. Further, the exhibitions draw on material from national collections, making them available in the regions — Arms and Armour of the Civil War will take objects from the Royal Armouries to five cities and Bradford Museum's exhibition Ramayana: the Hindu Epic came entirely from the holdings of the India Office Library.

These popular and well attended exhibi- tions (The New Look attracted 40,000 visi- tors when it was in Manchester) do for museum objects what the South Bank Cen- tre touring exhibitions do for the visual arts, and working together attempt to cre- ate a balance in the provision of the kind of visual education that can come as much from looking at a sculpture by Barry Flana- gan as at a rush lamp or an early lifeboat.

The root of the problem is that the MGC has had the temerity to ask for more money to expand a service that had proved itself too quickly. But it was a perfectly rea- sonable request: after all, the Arts Council asked for and got an extra £6 million for their 'Great Britain on Tour' plan for the performing arts, while another £6 million has been conjured out of the air for the Prime Minister's Arts Festival to mark the opening of the Free European Market. And then there was that overnight flurry of activity in 1988 when Mrs Thatcher sud- denly found previously unheard-of millions at the whiff of an offer of the loan of the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.

In his report, published in January, Richard Wilding concluded that unless the Government is prepared to put a minimum of half a million pounds into the enterprise, the continuation of the Travelling Exhibi- tions Unit is liable to do the MGC's repu- tation more harm than good and it should be wound up. It is clear, however, that the Minister has not read the report properly, or has been ill-advised. Wilding did not rec- ommend that the Unit be wound up. He merely chose not to argue its case for more money. So if Wilding won't argue it, others will. But first a history lesson.

The V & A's Circulation Department, until it closed down in 1978, was the single most important means of giving people outside London access to the rich decora- tive art collections of the V & A through succinct, engrossing loan exhibitions, well presented and generous of spirit. The Sci- ence Museum had a similar scheme. Even after 14 years the museum profession still mourns the loss of the Circulation Depart- ment. 'Its closing down is something that the museum world has been struggling with ever since,' says James Ayres, director of the John Judkyn Memorial, an exhibition touring organisation based in Bath.

As a way of making up for this loss, the MGC urged in 1983 that more money be provided for grants to museums to mount travelling exhibitions. Six years later (such is the speed of government) the Travelling Exhibitions Unit was formed. Perhaps this can be read as a sign of the museum world growing up, its staff in the regions using their own initiative and not just relying on national banks like the V & A to provide exhibitions. If this is the case, it is to be applauded. Indeed John Murdoch, assis- tant director of the V & A, believes that Circulation Department exhibitions tended to crowd out initiatives from the regions. The V & A now lends around 2,000 objects a year, of which 75 per cent went to muse- ums in Britain in 1990-91, with an addi- tional 1,400 long-term loans. Murdoch voices his museum's extreme sensitivity to the regions, but believes that the funding problems they face are not necessarily solved by providing exhibitions from the 'What do you recommend for meeting quiet desperation head-on?' centre. So in organising The New Look exhibition, one of which the V & A itself would have been proud, Manchester City Art Galleries borrowed nearly 50 objects from the V & A and with them and 400 others traced the story of international fashion and design in the 1950s.

To put on such important, popular but expensive exhibitions, regional museums need national government backing to underpin the sponsorship they are also now obliged to find. Thirteen additional spon- sors supported The New Look, including the European Community and the Swedish and Finnish governments. This is precisely why the Travelling Exhibitions Unit has so crucial a role to play. It is the only effective channel by which this nation makes its con- tribution to the support of the ebb and flow of museum exhibitions large and small around the country. And furthermore, the Unit sets standards of transport, handling and display which would be at risk if it were to disappear.

If this were to happen, the £150,000 cur- rently spent by the Unit would be redis- tributed around the seven Area Museum Councils for them to spend locally. But divided by seven this would hardly keep them in feather dusters and perspex polish for a year, let alone make the extra contri- bution to accessibility, quality and breadth of treatment on a national scale that the Travelling Exhibitions Unit has already shown it has the potential to make.

The museum profession is at present in such a state of disarray in the face of local government cuts that it is mesmerised by the Minister's decision. The Area Councils

do not know whether to scrap amongst themselves for the tiny apple that might fall their way, or argue for it to be left to grow on the bough: 'We wouldn't argue if the money is used for other things, such as sup- porting local exhibition initiatives through the Area Councils,' says the Museums Association's director, Mark Taylor. 'But we would share Wilding's worries about the Unit — it should be funded properly or not at all.'

The MGC has calculated that it would cost £1 million to recreate a system of tour- ing exhibitions that would match in quality and availability the service that the V & A once gave. The difference with the new scheme, however, would be that the exhibi- tions would crop up from initiatives in all parts of the country, rather than from the centre. A budget of £500,000 now would put them on to the right road. Set against the £1.5 million currently given in govern- ment subsidy for touring art and photogra- phy exhibitions through the Arts Council and South Bank Centre, the MGC request is modest indeed.

The most unequivocal support comes to the Unit not from the museum profession but from the Arts Council. Sandy Naire, its director of art, stresses that the MGC has performed extraordinarily well with the limited money they have had to spend on travelling exhibitions. 'They have carefully chosen areas of exhibition support that were being left out of other touring schemes. As it has only been going for three years it is too soon to tell, and it would be ludicrous to cut it now. It is very bad timing when local authorities are being driven to make the most unfortunate cuts because of shrinking resources. And it is worse timing still as the Arts Council is awaiting delivery of a major review Which will be looking at touring exhibition provi- sion across the board.'

Peter Longman, director of the MGC, says that the tragedy of the thing is that there was not very much money involved. 'We have agreed to look at other ways of providing the service, but we are not happy with the Minister's decision.' The Travel- ling Exhibitions Unit increases the quality and availability of exhibitions, so that the treasures of one town may be seen and enjoyed in another. It is about accessibility and freedom of cultural exchange, and it presents just the kind of freedom of oppor- tunity that the Government's Citizen's Charter professes to be about. Perhaps Mr Renton can be persuaded to think again.