Letters
Congratulations on another robust editorial. Your contributions remain one of the highlights each month and “Loss of MLA is chance to shape our future” summed up how many of us are feeling.
My only concern was your call for “the swift implementation of the core museums model” for Renaissance. I do not think that the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) has yet articulated what precisely that model is, and when they do, there should be an opportunity for discussion and consultation.
This need not be long-winded but if a recommendation is to be made to government then it must have a mandate from the Museums Association and the museum community.
It is believed that the MLA want direct funding to only go to a handful of ‘core museums’, the rest of Renaissance funding being retained for them to distribute according to other criteria. We might have more confidence in this if the options and implications had been worked out as part of a national strategy. But the MLA doesn’t want that.
While understanding that the ‘core museums model’ is based on the recommendations of last year’s Renaissance ‘review’, we need to see the details of how core museums will be chosen, what obligations they will have to the rest of the community and how the money remaining will be distributed.
In what ways is this a better idea than its rival – reduce the number of hub museums on the basis of performance, perhaps add others that merit promotion and strengthen those ancillary parts of Renaissance that we know are working well, such as museum development officers and some of the subject specialist networks?
Finally, a great deal has changed since the review team reported to the MLA. Too much to rely on yesterday’s best solutions, especially when they have not been properly discussed.
Stuart Davies, SDA consultancy
Museums Journal September 2010, p4
The Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s Accreditation panel recently ruled that the Royal Cornwall Museum (RCM) in Truro wouldn’t lose its Accreditation status as a result of selling two pictures.
While this is good news for the RCM, as a loss of Accreditation would be another setback that the museum can ill afford, it shouldn’t be seen as a green light for all museums to think about sale. It isn’t the panacea for the sector’s current and impending financial problems and it will always be controversial.
It also isn’t a quick or simple solution. The Museums Association (MA) and its ethics committee recognise that this is a difficult and emerging area of museum practice, and as such each case requires detailed discussion and scrutiny.
Since the code of ethics was changed three years ago only two museums have met the requirements of the code for a sale. For every museum that does eventually go ahead there are a number who have considered it and find what they are proposing doesn’t meet the code’s requirements. So the floodgates haven’t opened, and I am sure the difficulty of going ahead with this course of action means they won’t.
There is no doubt that in the current financial climate we will see more museums and galleries considering sale and the MA is committed to working with individual institutions and the sector as a whole on this issue.
We would encourage any museum considering sale to talk to us. It is not impossible but it certainly isn’t an easy option.
Caitlin Griffiths, head of workforce development and events, MA
Martin Evans’s letter on the copyright of photographs struck a chord with me. I am researching early bobbin lace, studying surviving examples of the lace, portraits of the period, pattern books and other printed and written material.
Curators have been exceedingly helpful in making reserve collections available. With one exception, I have been able to take as many photos as I like. The Victoria and Albert Museum and some other museums also allow photography in the galleries, as does the National Trust. What I am then permitted to do with those images is far from clear (and not helped by rarely receiving a copy of the signed permission form).
Using the images for personal study seems to be universally acceptable, but what is personal study? My research would make very slow progress without the opportunity to share questions and discoveries with other researchers across the world – so can I email them copies of my photos?
What about teaching – can I share my pictures with students? And what happens if they want to make copies? Can I use my photos to illustrate talks? If so, are there restrictions?
All that before even thinking of publication – there are different rules for magazines and books according to print run and whether or not the illustration will appear on the cover; online publication is another minefield. Anything the Museums Association can do to bring clarity to this situation would be very welcome.
Meanwhile, I would be delighted to hear from any reader who knows the whereabouts of any pre-1640 lace – silk, linen or metallic thread – that might have been made in England. This lace might be attached to garments, accessories or household linens as edgings, insertions or surface decoration.
Gilian Dye, Northumberland, email: gildye@aol.com
Museums Journal September 2010, p20
I am a relatively young managing director of two companies, one of which is an established multidisciplinary museum and interpretation design company.
The Conservative party made a big deal of their Work for Yourself supplement to the Work Programme, whereby they promise to encourage and support self-employment and new entrepreneurs in an attempt to create new companies, with National Insurance tax breaks, and therefore create 60,000 new private sector jobs.
Their rhetoric at the moment puts small private businesses at the heart of the nation’s financial recovery.
Myself and my colleagues started both companies much in the entrepreneurial spirit described above but, frankly, all the effort we have put in over the last three years to successfully ride out the recession could have been irrelevant – the destabilisation of museum programmes through Heritage Lottery Fund uncertainty and regional development agency spending halts mean that the outlook is bleak for museums.
Our company appears to have been built around a market that appears, in an instant, to have destabilised. I find it insulting that the Conservative party suggests that private industry is the “way out” when their careless policy changes shift the goalposts so quickly and with such magnitude that planning is futile, which isn’t a good basis for business sustainability, never mind growth.
Can Ed Vaizey tell me what the logic is behind destabilising industries, then going on holiday for the summer? How are we supposed to plan?
Name withheld
“David Cameron has called for a focus on heritage as a major part of the UK’s tourism offer.”
Yet on the same page and the one following: “Several major new museum projects are at risk following the government’s decision to scrap the nine English regional development agencies” and bad news about Liverpool’s National Conservation Centre, among others.
Joined up thinking or what?
Chris Pritchett, partner, Austin-Smith: Lord
Museums Journal September 2010, Cameron urges heritage focus
Museums Journal September 2010, Axe for RDAs threatens projects
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Museums Journal reserves the right to edit letters
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- Working with older people
- What is the point of the Art Fund Prize?
- Interview with Mosi director Tony Hill
- Reviews: Bury Transport Museum; Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; No1 Smithery, Chatham Historic Dockyard