It’s more than 10 years since devolution in the UK, but the role that museums play in meeting the needs of new national agendas remains a sensitive subject.
The three devolved nations, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, all operate their museums in different ways, and reflecting identity has created different challenges in each country.
“When the National Museum of Scotland opened in 1998, it dealt with the 20th century through a gallery of design icons, as if it was unable to deal with Scotland’s fairly traumatic history in this period,” says Mark O’Neill, the director of policy, research and development at Glasgow Life, the trust that runs museums for Glasgow City Council.
“It took almost 10 years to change this into Scotland: A Changing Nation, in 2008, a gallery that is reasonably up-to-date in representing cultural diversity in Scotland.”
The next big Scottish institutional flag-bearers will be two redeveloped museums in Edinburgh: the National Museum of Scotland, which is undergoing a £46m expansion into the old Royal Museum building that will be unveiled on 29 July; and the £17.6m redevelopment of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which opens in November.
John Leighton, the director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, says that changing displays at the portrait gallery will offer “critical perspectives and layered narratives” from the past and the present.
“Part of our aim is to help the public form their own minds about what it means to be Scottish, to be British, to be European in a modern global society,” Leighton says. “In Scotland, our national collections have always been a focus for pride, ambition, or distinction, but we would never describe them as ‘national identity’ projects.”
The National Galleries of Scotland is funded in accordance with the arm’s length principle, although national pride and the geographical proximity to the seat of power can make for a complex relationship with government.
The museum landscape is changing in Scotland, with culture minister Fiona Hyslop inviting Museums Galleries Scotland, a membership organisation that also distributes government money, to draw up a national strategy for museums and galleries.
The move came after a 2010 report called for a framework for sustainable museum development across the country. The report said a national strategy should redress the balance between local authority, independent and national provision.
In Wales, the museum infrastructure is perceived to be closer to government than in England. CyMAL: Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales is the agency that deals with museums and it is in effect an arm of government. As a result, grant criteria tends to fit in with national agendas.
There is already a national museum strategy in place, points out Rachael Rogers, president of the Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales. The strategy focuses on the effective management of collections, access and defining a distributed national collection.
One big project that will deal with questions of identity is the redevelopment of St Fagans National History Museum. The site on the edge of Cardiff opened in 1948 to help preserve Welsh traditions and language.
David Anderson, director general of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, says that national identity is central to the redevelopment of the museum.
“St Fagans was conceived as a mirror to the nation but also as a mirror to a particular interpretation of Welsh identity rooted in a politically liberal and rural context. More recently, it has reflected a Wales that is industrial and multicultural, and will present identity as negotiable, not monolithic,” says Anderson, who adds that the wealth of non-material culture, including oral history at St Fagans, provides a new way of examining national heritage.
Rhiannon Mason, the director of the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, has written about the relationship between the national museums and government in Wales. She says that National Museum Wales has at times aligned its strategic priorities with those of the Welsh Assembly government in relation to identity.
“Since devolution, it is evident that there has been some linking of aims between the two, but in a fairly open-ended way,” says Mason. “What is the role of the public museum? There should be sufficient distance [from government] to allow public museums to serve the public interest rather than party political needs.”
This issue was highlighted last spring in Belfast when the Democratic Unionist politician and minister for culture, arts and leisure, Nelson McCausland, wrote to the trustees of National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI), calling for more prominence to be given to the Ulster-Scots story and the Orange Order in NMNI displays.
“I raised these issues to ensure that national museums’ exhibitions fully reflect the historical, cultural, religious and political rights of all citizens of Northern Ireland within the context of a shared future,” McCausland told Museums Journal.
He has prioritised the creation of a policy framework for the development of Northern Ireland’s museums over the next 10 years that considers historical complexities and a museums strategy was published in March.
NMNI is currently undertaking an evaluation of the refurbishment of the Ulster Museum, which reopened in 2009 after a £17.9m revamp. McCausland says the review has been expanded, at his request, “to consider matters such as curatorial interpretation and presentation”.
Is there a danger then that politicians could try to politicise cultural institutions? A group of French academics think this may be the case with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to convert the National Archives building in Paris into a French history museum.
Sarkozy’s aim of “reinforcing national identity” at the new museum prompted protests from nine eminent historians, who insist that Sarkozy will endorse a “narrow” agenda at the planned institution.
Could there ever be a British equivalent of the grandiose French scheme? A £150m museum of “Britishness’” was championed in 2007 by the then prime minister Gordon Brown and former Tory minister Kenneth Baker.
A Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) report commissioned by the department for culture in early 2009 recommended that the proposed scheme should be a digitally-led partnership body with no building or collection. None of the proposals have been implemented and the report was shelved.
Baker told the Museums Journal: “When Brown discovered that words were not enough and some state support would be necessary, his enthusiasm waned. A pity, as it would have been a good legacy for him.”
Politicians seem keen to address the question of identity. In a recent speech, prime minister David Cameron said that state multiculturalism had failed. But O’Neill at Glasgow says that sitting on the fence is the real problem.
“Because national museums claim to be apolitical, they can celebrate identities in a very multicultural way, but there is no evidence that they have any intention of trying to challenge divisive identities or promote a Cameronian vision of British citizenship,” says O’Neill.
Britain’s place on the planet is at the heart of Stories of the World, a Cultural Olympiad scheme launched in 2009 by the MLA, which involves 60 museums.
Isobel Siddons, MLA’s programme manager for 2012, says: “Exploring our national identity in an outward-looking way is our focus.”
What is obvious is that the identity issue is a conversation in progress. The challenge for national museums is to follow and engage with the dialogue.
Gareth Harris is a freelance journalist
“The new Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London effectively tell stories of different identity groups in a way which highlights their complexities.”
Vanessa Trevelyan, head, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service
“The British Empire & Commonwealth Museum in Bristol [now closed]; Norwich Castle’s Viking and Anglo-Saxon Gallery, which explores the issue of migration and how successive waves of settlers have made us the people we are today; and the Great British Art Debate, which involves Tate, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, and Museums Sheffield.”
Mungo Campbell, deputy director, The Hunterian, Glasgow
“The 2007 commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade provided a rare window for organisations of every size to examine an issue which is now understood by a far wider spectrum of the population to have been an immensely powerful social, economic and cultural influence.”
Jonathan Williams, keeper of the department of prehistory and Europe, British Museum, London
“There’s a really significant role for national/regional partnerships in connecting stories of local and regional to national (and indeed international) identity. The displays at the Shetland Museum and Archives are a great example of this, as is the refurbished Yorkshire Museum’s new Roman gallery, which was developed in partnership with the BM.”
The three devolved nations, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, all operate their museums in different ways, and reflecting identity has created different challenges in each country.
“When the National Museum of Scotland opened in 1998, it dealt with the 20th century through a gallery of design icons, as if it was unable to deal with Scotland’s fairly traumatic history in this period,” says Mark O’Neill, the director of policy, research and development at Glasgow Life, the trust that runs museums for Glasgow City Council.
“It took almost 10 years to change this into Scotland: A Changing Nation, in 2008, a gallery that is reasonably up-to-date in representing cultural diversity in Scotland.”
The next big Scottish institutional flag-bearers will be two redeveloped museums in Edinburgh: the National Museum of Scotland, which is undergoing a £46m expansion into the old Royal Museum building that will be unveiled on 29 July; and the £17.6m redevelopment of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which opens in November.
John Leighton, the director general of the National Galleries of Scotland, says that changing displays at the portrait gallery will offer “critical perspectives and layered narratives” from the past and the present.
“Part of our aim is to help the public form their own minds about what it means to be Scottish, to be British, to be European in a modern global society,” Leighton says. “In Scotland, our national collections have always been a focus for pride, ambition, or distinction, but we would never describe them as ‘national identity’ projects.”
The National Galleries of Scotland is funded in accordance with the arm’s length principle, although national pride and the geographical proximity to the seat of power can make for a complex relationship with government.
The museum landscape is changing in Scotland, with culture minister Fiona Hyslop inviting Museums Galleries Scotland, a membership organisation that also distributes government money, to draw up a national strategy for museums and galleries.
The move came after a 2010 report called for a framework for sustainable museum development across the country. The report said a national strategy should redress the balance between local authority, independent and national provision.
In Wales, the museum infrastructure is perceived to be closer to government than in England. CyMAL: Museums, Archives and Libraries Wales is the agency that deals with museums and it is in effect an arm of government. As a result, grant criteria tends to fit in with national agendas.
There is already a national museum strategy in place, points out Rachael Rogers, president of the Federation of Museums and Art Galleries of Wales. The strategy focuses on the effective management of collections, access and defining a distributed national collection.
One big project that will deal with questions of identity is the redevelopment of St Fagans National History Museum. The site on the edge of Cardiff opened in 1948 to help preserve Welsh traditions and language.
David Anderson, director general of Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales, says that national identity is central to the redevelopment of the museum.
“St Fagans was conceived as a mirror to the nation but also as a mirror to a particular interpretation of Welsh identity rooted in a politically liberal and rural context. More recently, it has reflected a Wales that is industrial and multicultural, and will present identity as negotiable, not monolithic,” says Anderson, who adds that the wealth of non-material culture, including oral history at St Fagans, provides a new way of examining national heritage.
Rhiannon Mason, the director of the International Centre for Cultural and Heritage Studies at Newcastle University, has written about the relationship between the national museums and government in Wales. She says that National Museum Wales has at times aligned its strategic priorities with those of the Welsh Assembly government in relation to identity.
“Since devolution, it is evident that there has been some linking of aims between the two, but in a fairly open-ended way,” says Mason. “What is the role of the public museum? There should be sufficient distance [from government] to allow public museums to serve the public interest rather than party political needs.”
This issue was highlighted last spring in Belfast when the Democratic Unionist politician and minister for culture, arts and leisure, Nelson McCausland, wrote to the trustees of National Museums Northern Ireland (NMNI), calling for more prominence to be given to the Ulster-Scots story and the Orange Order in NMNI displays.
“I raised these issues to ensure that national museums’ exhibitions fully reflect the historical, cultural, religious and political rights of all citizens of Northern Ireland within the context of a shared future,” McCausland told Museums Journal.
He has prioritised the creation of a policy framework for the development of Northern Ireland’s museums over the next 10 years that considers historical complexities and a museums strategy was published in March.
NMNI is currently undertaking an evaluation of the refurbishment of the Ulster Museum, which reopened in 2009 after a £17.9m revamp. McCausland says the review has been expanded, at his request, “to consider matters such as curatorial interpretation and presentation”.
Is there a danger then that politicians could try to politicise cultural institutions? A group of French academics think this may be the case with President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plans to convert the National Archives building in Paris into a French history museum.
Sarkozy’s aim of “reinforcing national identity” at the new museum prompted protests from nine eminent historians, who insist that Sarkozy will endorse a “narrow” agenda at the planned institution.
Could there ever be a British equivalent of the grandiose French scheme? A £150m museum of “Britishness’” was championed in 2007 by the then prime minister Gordon Brown and former Tory minister Kenneth Baker.
A Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) report commissioned by the department for culture in early 2009 recommended that the proposed scheme should be a digitally-led partnership body with no building or collection. None of the proposals have been implemented and the report was shelved.
Baker told the Museums Journal: “When Brown discovered that words were not enough and some state support would be necessary, his enthusiasm waned. A pity, as it would have been a good legacy for him.”
Politicians seem keen to address the question of identity. In a recent speech, prime minister David Cameron said that state multiculturalism had failed. But O’Neill at Glasgow says that sitting on the fence is the real problem.
“Because national museums claim to be apolitical, they can celebrate identities in a very multicultural way, but there is no evidence that they have any intention of trying to challenge divisive identities or promote a Cameronian vision of British citizenship,” says O’Neill.
Britain’s place on the planet is at the heart of Stories of the World, a Cultural Olympiad scheme launched in 2009 by the MLA, which involves 60 museums.
Isobel Siddons, MLA’s programme manager for 2012, says: “Exploring our national identity in an outward-looking way is our focus.”
What is obvious is that the identity issue is a conversation in progress. The challenge for national museums is to follow and engage with the dialogue.
Gareth Harris is a freelance journalist
Experts’ choice: key national identity projects of the past decade
Rhiannon Mason, senior lecturer, Newcastle University“The new Galleries of Modern London at the Museum of London effectively tell stories of different identity groups in a way which highlights their complexities.”
Vanessa Trevelyan, head, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service
“The British Empire & Commonwealth Museum in Bristol [now closed]; Norwich Castle’s Viking and Anglo-Saxon Gallery, which explores the issue of migration and how successive waves of settlers have made us the people we are today; and the Great British Art Debate, which involves Tate, Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums, and Museums Sheffield.”
Mungo Campbell, deputy director, The Hunterian, Glasgow
“The 2007 commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade provided a rare window for organisations of every size to examine an issue which is now understood by a far wider spectrum of the population to have been an immensely powerful social, economic and cultural influence.”
Jonathan Williams, keeper of the department of prehistory and Europe, British Museum, London
“There’s a really significant role for national/regional partnerships in connecting stories of local and regional to national (and indeed international) identity. The displays at the Shetland Museum and Archives are a great example of this, as is the refurbished Yorkshire Museum’s new Roman gallery, which was developed in partnership with the BM.”