The insider - Museums Association

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Conference 2024: The Joy of Museums booking open now – Book before 31 March 2024 for a 10% discount

The insider

That for which we are truly grateful
Maev Kennedy
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Happy new year and thank you. No honestly, thank you very much. This is the year of philanthropic philanthropy – for which I am truly grateful – and so I wish to say thank you. We all do. Gonna be a whole lotta thankin’ goin’ on.

In fact, what about a special uniform, a sort of badge of institutional gratitude, for all museums?

Nice spotlessly white collars and cuffs for management and long serge oversleeves and neat sacking aprons for lower ranks. Iron-on labels saying “THANK YOU VERY MUCH” will be enough for most, particularly given the likelihood of rapid staff turnover this year, but at management level the uniform should be embroidered with the philanthropist’s corporate logo, slogan and trademark – and possibly supplied in the company colours.

Clearly philanthropy is not a one-way street. It’s not enough for museums to be passively grateful – this must be a partnership. In a very real sense, both sides can benefit. In any organisation there will be so many little jobs that need doing: floors to be swept, washrooms to be scrubbed…

I suggest that each junior member of staff bowl up at the patron’s place of work, in their new aprons, and just see what needs doing. Even backroom staff should be able to display tangible signs of gratitude: accounts, so used to making one penny do the work of two, can look out for something novel in the tax-avoidance line, while IT could give a day a month to firewalling the patron against WikiLeaks supporters.

Obviously it’s going to be tricky to offer gratitude to philanthropists whose primary businesses are located offshore, but I am working up a sort of Museastes Sans Frontières, for which staff will volunteer to give up all or part of their holidays.

For my part, I feel all I can do is offer media support, so over Christmas I have been embroidering a new green eyeshade, which now reads: “Thank you, Mr Hunt, for not abolishing museums, I promise never to spoonerise or freudiate you. Thank you.”


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