Cuts are a conservation stopper
Budget cuts are affecting standards of conservation care
Conservation professionals will be in the spotlight next month when the winners of the Institute of Conservation awards are announced.
Birmingham Museums Trust, Tate and the Imperial War Museum are among the nominees for the awards, which “recognise the highest standards of conservation, research and collections care within the UK art and heritage sectors”.
But some conservation specialists say funding cuts at a national and regional level are impacting on standards of collections care. As budgets are reduced, conservation departments are losing staff and are being restructured, like other areas of museums.
A spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) says: “In line with the rest of the museum, the conservation department has been looking for opportunities to make efficiencies in recent years, in response to budget cuts. This has included reorganising some job roles during periods of natural staff turnover and, in particular, developing a more flexible model of working to better reflect the workloads of an increased public exhibition programme, as well as FuturePlan gallery projects.”
The FuturePlan redevelopment programme required significantly more specialists, which the V&A has employed on contract. These include sculpture conservation experts taken on during the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries project, which opened in 2009, when the number of sculpture studio staff temporarily increased from five to eleven.
The V&A’s conservation department costs about £2m annually, which has remained consistent for a couple of years. The British Museum’s core budget for the conservation and scientific research department is about £3m.Conservation at National Museums Liverpool (NML) has also been hit by cutbacks.
A spokeswoman says: “NML has been subject to cuts across all areas of operations since 2010, accounting for 28% of our overall grant-in-aid funding.”
NML has lost one in four posts through voluntary exit schemes, which has affected the conservation department, she adds, though conservation and technical research are still priorities for the collections management division.
A senior conservator at a national museum, who prefers to remain anonymous, says collection care is at risk in the current climate: “Budget cuts have severely affected our ability to deliver conservation and collections care. We are struggling to meet even basic requirements for consumables and materials, with no resources to mitigate situations arising from collection hazards and pest problems.”
She adds that there is no funding for freelance conservation work at her museum, but stresses that there are no plans to cut staff numbers in her department. Other institutions are exploring new ways of raising revenue.
The Bowes Museum in County Durham raised £22,163 last summer through the Art Fund’s crowdfunding initiative Art Happens for the conservation of a 15th-century Flemish altarpiece. The museum’s conservation department employs four full-time staff, including a textile conservator.
Conservation manager at the Bowes Museum, Jon Old, says that collections care remains a priority, and his department is looking to generate enough income through commercial work to partially pay for the textile conservator post by 2017.
The museum is also hosting three interns as part of a five-year project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of its Skills For The Future scheme supported by Icon.
Birmingham Museums Trust, Tate and the Imperial War Museum are among the nominees for the awards, which “recognise the highest standards of conservation, research and collections care within the UK art and heritage sectors”.
But some conservation specialists say funding cuts at a national and regional level are impacting on standards of collections care. As budgets are reduced, conservation departments are losing staff and are being restructured, like other areas of museums.
A spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) says: “In line with the rest of the museum, the conservation department has been looking for opportunities to make efficiencies in recent years, in response to budget cuts. This has included reorganising some job roles during periods of natural staff turnover and, in particular, developing a more flexible model of working to better reflect the workloads of an increased public exhibition programme, as well as FuturePlan gallery projects.”
The FuturePlan redevelopment programme required significantly more specialists, which the V&A has employed on contract. These include sculpture conservation experts taken on during the Medieval & Renaissance Galleries project, which opened in 2009, when the number of sculpture studio staff temporarily increased from five to eleven.
The V&A’s conservation department costs about £2m annually, which has remained consistent for a couple of years. The British Museum’s core budget for the conservation and scientific research department is about £3m.Conservation at National Museums Liverpool (NML) has also been hit by cutbacks.
A spokeswoman says: “NML has been subject to cuts across all areas of operations since 2010, accounting for 28% of our overall grant-in-aid funding.”
NML has lost one in four posts through voluntary exit schemes, which has affected the conservation department, she adds, though conservation and technical research are still priorities for the collections management division.
A senior conservator at a national museum, who prefers to remain anonymous, says collection care is at risk in the current climate: “Budget cuts have severely affected our ability to deliver conservation and collections care. We are struggling to meet even basic requirements for consumables and materials, with no resources to mitigate situations arising from collection hazards and pest problems.”
She adds that there is no funding for freelance conservation work at her museum, but stresses that there are no plans to cut staff numbers in her department. Other institutions are exploring new ways of raising revenue.
The Bowes Museum in County Durham raised £22,163 last summer through the Art Fund’s crowdfunding initiative Art Happens for the conservation of a 15th-century Flemish altarpiece. The museum’s conservation department employs four full-time staff, including a textile conservator.
Conservation manager at the Bowes Museum, Jon Old, says that collections care remains a priority, and his department is looking to generate enough income through commercial work to partially pay for the textile conservator post by 2017.
The museum is also hosting three interns as part of a five-year project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of its Skills For The Future scheme supported by Icon.