On 1 April, Glasgow's museums and galleries and their £13m budget ceased to be managed by the local authority. Instead, the 14 sites, including the jewel in the crown, the newly refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, were handed over to a charitable company, the Culture and Sport Glasgow Trust, overseen by a board of trustees.
The council's justification for the move is largely financial. As a charity, the new body will have greater freedom to tap into funds such as the Big Lottery and the Carnegie Foundation, as well as having its own trading arm to develop venue hire and other commercial activities. It will be contracted to the council, which will still exercise overall control and retain ownership of buildings and museum collections.
This is not a new idea. Several museum services, including ones in cities such as Sheffield and York, are now run by charitable trusts. But in Glasgow, the new company will not only be responsible for museums, but also for the city's entire cultural division, as well as for sport.
In a city where museums and galleries enjoy a higher national and international profile than most other municipal services, the move came as a surprise.
It is supported by the Scottish Arts Council, which sees it as an imaginative response to problems in the cultural sector. But it has been criticised by others. Trade union Unison has attacked what it sees as a move designed to make short-term savings.
Julian Spalding, cultural commentator and a former director of Glasgow Museums Service, is no fan of the way the city council has run its museums service hitherto, and he argues that this two-headed beast is a recipe for further disintegration.
'The National Gallery [of Scotland] in Edinburgh has a separate budget and directors who are totally dedicated to the work of that institution,' he says. 'In Glasgow, you will have a board with local-authority representatives and business people who are giving part of their time to running a huge organisation. How many of them will be interested in museums and galleries? Where will museums and galleries be on the agenda? They will be marginalised.'
The council maintains that accountability will be safeguarded and initial savings of £5.6m, through tax breaks for which the new company will be eligible as a charity, will be reinvested in the service. A spokesman for the city council adds that there is no danger that culture will be swamped by the demands of sport.
'Glasgow's cultural services have a very high profile and, in budget terms, almost the same amount is - and will be - spent on museums and arts as on sport,' he says. 'Both culture and sport are very strong in Glasgow and the creation of Culture and Sport Glasgow will maintain and enhance the profile of these services.'
A Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) report from 2006 into trusts, carried out by the Egeria consultancy, points out that transferring museums into culture and leisure trusts risks 'transplanting the difficulties that museums have faced within local authorities due to their smaller size, which makes it difficult to compete with other functions (especially where these are statutory) for resources.'
It also increases the likelihood of museum budgets being squeezed in the drive for 'cost effectiveness' and can make lobbying on museums' behalf more difficult, as being in a trust 'distances them from the council's political leadership'.
Whether this proves to be the case in Glasgow, remains to be seen. The city's museums enjoy a far more elevated status and profile than those belonging to most other local authorities, which may help them hold their own against sport and safeguard them if the trust's financial aspirations fail to bear fruit.
Glasgow is arguably the most prestigious local-authority museum service to be hived off as part of a larger cultural or leisure services trust, but it is not the first and is unlikely to be the last.
Fifteen other local authorities in Scotland alone are considering the same route. In England, Rochdale sport, leisure and cultural services became a trust last month. Luton is studying the options for its museum service and Rotherham has engaged a consultant to examine whether turning its museums and libraries services into a trust is a viable option.
Wigan's leisure and sports division, including its museums and libraries, became a trust in 2003. Again, the rationale was financial: since 1990 - the year Wigan's poll tax was capped - the department's budget had been diminishing year on year.
'We did it because of the finance benefits which enabled us to have an investment stream for the service,' says Rodney Hill, the chief executive of Wigan Leisure & Culture Trust. 'But it was also a strategic decision. We were looking at where local authorities were going, and there was pressure to look to externalise services, whichever political party was in power.'
Since the trust was set up, the Museum of Memories has closed and another attraction, The Way We Were, is to shut at the end of the year - not a good result for museums, by any objective assessment.
But Hill says the decisions on both were ultimately taken by the council rather than the trust, and ownership of all buildings and collections remains with the council.
Improvements to services have thus far been focused on libraries, though the trust is turning its attention to heritage services, including the development of a cultural quarter incorporating The Way We Were site.
The trust has access to a £500,000 investment fund, made up of reductions on business rates for which it is eligible as a charity, which has been ring-fenced by the council.
Yet, in revenue terms, Wigan's trust is actually no wealthier than the service was previously, Hill admits. 'The trust budget is £26m gross - £16m net,' he says. 'It is about the same as we had before. We are no better or worse off in terms of revenue budget. My advice to anyone considering doing it would be to look at your particular circumstances.
I believe it is more cost effective because we are sharing overheads across a range of services. Wigan also has a good record of working in partnership with others, which we have been able to build on.'
Besides the potential financial advantages - tax exemptions, rate reductions and easier access to lottery and other funding - the other argument put forward in favour of putting museum services into independent bodies is freedom from the local-authority machine.
It is argued that as trusts are out of the direct control of local authorities, they have the ability to innovate, form partnerships and escape the general bureaucracy that accompanies all council decision-making.
However, hiving off a whole division of cultural and leisure services risks negating such benefits. One risk for Glasgow is that the new independent body is so large that it needs to replicate the old local-authority machinery in order to operate, so the potential for flexibility and quick decision-making is lost.
York Museums became a trust in 2002 and has benefited hugely from its independent status, says chief executive Janet Barnes.
'Our fundraising record has been far in excess of the funding record before,' she says. 'We raised £3.4m in the first three-and-a-half years, including hub money, with additional funds from business, trusts and foundations, including the DCMS/Wolfson Foundation. We were able to respond quickly and positively to these opportunities. Everybody [in the council] seems to think that we have done very well.'
The trust has the flexibility to create new posts when required, can reinvest its surpluses from its £5m turnover, and can be decisive when it comes to seizing opportunities. Barnes says none of this would have been possible had museums been included with the city's other leisure or cultural services.
'I have never experienced a bigger cultural trust, but I think it would be deathly,' she says. 'It is a matter of scale and focus. The virtue of a museums and galleries trust is that we are focused on the business of running museums and galleries.
Therefore there is clarity of vision, the trustees know what they are doing and we all proceed. I think the bigger an organisation gets, the more diffused it gets, so people have less power as individuals - less motivation and less control.'
What happens in Glasgow over the next few years will be watched carefully by the museum sector. But even if it is a success, it won't automatically provide a sound model for other large museum services to copy.
The circumstances, history and status of Glasgow's museums are unique to the city - every service in every other town and city will be different. It may well be that Glasgow's museums, given their long-standing prestige, will not be overshadowed by the rest of culture and sport.
As the Wigan experience demonstrates, the same would not necessarily be true of services in other cities, whose pride in their museums is less than wholehearted.
Julie Nightingale is a freelance journalist
Changes: who's taken trust status, who's looking
From 1 April:
Glasgow - museums are part of Culture and Sport Glasgow, a charitable company
Rochdale - museums are part of a sport, leisure and culture trust
Others examining the trust route include:
St Albans - investigating whether to turn museums into an independent trust
Rotherham - looking into converting its museums, galleries and libraries into a trust. Leisure services is going independent under a PFI scheme
Luton - transferred its sport and physical recreation services to trust status in 2005. Assessing proposal to convert its museums service to trust status; considering if other cultural services should also be transferred
Wandsworth - the council has announced it will be working towards establishing an independent trust to take over running the museum.
The council's justification for the move is largely financial. As a charity, the new body will have greater freedom to tap into funds such as the Big Lottery and the Carnegie Foundation, as well as having its own trading arm to develop venue hire and other commercial activities. It will be contracted to the council, which will still exercise overall control and retain ownership of buildings and museum collections.
This is not a new idea. Several museum services, including ones in cities such as Sheffield and York, are now run by charitable trusts. But in Glasgow, the new company will not only be responsible for museums, but also for the city's entire cultural division, as well as for sport.
In a city where museums and galleries enjoy a higher national and international profile than most other municipal services, the move came as a surprise.
It is supported by the Scottish Arts Council, which sees it as an imaginative response to problems in the cultural sector. But it has been criticised by others. Trade union Unison has attacked what it sees as a move designed to make short-term savings.
Julian Spalding, cultural commentator and a former director of Glasgow Museums Service, is no fan of the way the city council has run its museums service hitherto, and he argues that this two-headed beast is a recipe for further disintegration.
'The National Gallery [of Scotland] in Edinburgh has a separate budget and directors who are totally dedicated to the work of that institution,' he says. 'In Glasgow, you will have a board with local-authority representatives and business people who are giving part of their time to running a huge organisation. How many of them will be interested in museums and galleries? Where will museums and galleries be on the agenda? They will be marginalised.'
The council maintains that accountability will be safeguarded and initial savings of £5.6m, through tax breaks for which the new company will be eligible as a charity, will be reinvested in the service. A spokesman for the city council adds that there is no danger that culture will be swamped by the demands of sport.
'Glasgow's cultural services have a very high profile and, in budget terms, almost the same amount is - and will be - spent on museums and arts as on sport,' he says. 'Both culture and sport are very strong in Glasgow and the creation of Culture and Sport Glasgow will maintain and enhance the profile of these services.'
A Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) report from 2006 into trusts, carried out by the Egeria consultancy, points out that transferring museums into culture and leisure trusts risks 'transplanting the difficulties that museums have faced within local authorities due to their smaller size, which makes it difficult to compete with other functions (especially where these are statutory) for resources.'
It also increases the likelihood of museum budgets being squeezed in the drive for 'cost effectiveness' and can make lobbying on museums' behalf more difficult, as being in a trust 'distances them from the council's political leadership'.
Whether this proves to be the case in Glasgow, remains to be seen. The city's museums enjoy a far more elevated status and profile than those belonging to most other local authorities, which may help them hold their own against sport and safeguard them if the trust's financial aspirations fail to bear fruit.
Glasgow is arguably the most prestigious local-authority museum service to be hived off as part of a larger cultural or leisure services trust, but it is not the first and is unlikely to be the last.
Fifteen other local authorities in Scotland alone are considering the same route. In England, Rochdale sport, leisure and cultural services became a trust last month. Luton is studying the options for its museum service and Rotherham has engaged a consultant to examine whether turning its museums and libraries services into a trust is a viable option.
Wigan's leisure and sports division, including its museums and libraries, became a trust in 2003. Again, the rationale was financial: since 1990 - the year Wigan's poll tax was capped - the department's budget had been diminishing year on year.
'We did it because of the finance benefits which enabled us to have an investment stream for the service,' says Rodney Hill, the chief executive of Wigan Leisure & Culture Trust. 'But it was also a strategic decision. We were looking at where local authorities were going, and there was pressure to look to externalise services, whichever political party was in power.'
Since the trust was set up, the Museum of Memories has closed and another attraction, The Way We Were, is to shut at the end of the year - not a good result for museums, by any objective assessment.
But Hill says the decisions on both were ultimately taken by the council rather than the trust, and ownership of all buildings and collections remains with the council.
Improvements to services have thus far been focused on libraries, though the trust is turning its attention to heritage services, including the development of a cultural quarter incorporating The Way We Were site.
The trust has access to a £500,000 investment fund, made up of reductions on business rates for which it is eligible as a charity, which has been ring-fenced by the council.
Yet, in revenue terms, Wigan's trust is actually no wealthier than the service was previously, Hill admits. 'The trust budget is £26m gross - £16m net,' he says. 'It is about the same as we had before. We are no better or worse off in terms of revenue budget. My advice to anyone considering doing it would be to look at your particular circumstances.
I believe it is more cost effective because we are sharing overheads across a range of services. Wigan also has a good record of working in partnership with others, which we have been able to build on.'
Besides the potential financial advantages - tax exemptions, rate reductions and easier access to lottery and other funding - the other argument put forward in favour of putting museum services into independent bodies is freedom from the local-authority machine.
It is argued that as trusts are out of the direct control of local authorities, they have the ability to innovate, form partnerships and escape the general bureaucracy that accompanies all council decision-making.
However, hiving off a whole division of cultural and leisure services risks negating such benefits. One risk for Glasgow is that the new independent body is so large that it needs to replicate the old local-authority machinery in order to operate, so the potential for flexibility and quick decision-making is lost.
York Museums became a trust in 2002 and has benefited hugely from its independent status, says chief executive Janet Barnes.
'Our fundraising record has been far in excess of the funding record before,' she says. 'We raised £3.4m in the first three-and-a-half years, including hub money, with additional funds from business, trusts and foundations, including the DCMS/Wolfson Foundation. We were able to respond quickly and positively to these opportunities. Everybody [in the council] seems to think that we have done very well.'
The trust has the flexibility to create new posts when required, can reinvest its surpluses from its £5m turnover, and can be decisive when it comes to seizing opportunities. Barnes says none of this would have been possible had museums been included with the city's other leisure or cultural services.
'I have never experienced a bigger cultural trust, but I think it would be deathly,' she says. 'It is a matter of scale and focus. The virtue of a museums and galleries trust is that we are focused on the business of running museums and galleries.
Therefore there is clarity of vision, the trustees know what they are doing and we all proceed. I think the bigger an organisation gets, the more diffused it gets, so people have less power as individuals - less motivation and less control.'
What happens in Glasgow over the next few years will be watched carefully by the museum sector. But even if it is a success, it won't automatically provide a sound model for other large museum services to copy.
The circumstances, history and status of Glasgow's museums are unique to the city - every service in every other town and city will be different. It may well be that Glasgow's museums, given their long-standing prestige, will not be overshadowed by the rest of culture and sport.
As the Wigan experience demonstrates, the same would not necessarily be true of services in other cities, whose pride in their museums is less than wholehearted.
Julie Nightingale is a freelance journalist
Changes: who's taken trust status, who's looking
From 1 April:
Glasgow - museums are part of Culture and Sport Glasgow, a charitable company
Rochdale - museums are part of a sport, leisure and culture trust
Others examining the trust route include:
St Albans - investigating whether to turn museums into an independent trust
Rotherham - looking into converting its museums, galleries and libraries into a trust. Leisure services is going independent under a PFI scheme
Luton - transferred its sport and physical recreation services to trust status in 2005. Assessing proposal to convert its museums service to trust status; considering if other cultural services should also be transferred
Wandsworth - the council has announced it will be working towards establishing an independent trust to take over running the museum.