On the border
Despite recent progress in negotiations between the EU and the UK government, there are still concerns about the impact that Brexit might have on the cultural landscape in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Patrick Kelly reports
Visitors who attended the Modern Experiments exhibition at the West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen over the summer might not have spent much time worrying about the UK’s tortured Brexit negotiations with the EU. But the touring show, its genesis and indeed the artist behind it exemplifies the spirit of cross-border cooperation in Ireland, which could be irrevocably damaged by the looming split with Europe.
Modern Experiments was the work of Belfast-born Susan MacWilliam, who divides her time between her home town and Dublin. She teaches at the Irish National College of Art and Design in the Republic of Ireland, but has represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale and was awarded a commission for Derry during its time as UK City of Culture in 2013. The exhibition, which recently ended its tour at the Butler Gallery Kilkenny, was the product of a long-standing programme that brings together the Highlanes Gallery, a municipal gallery and visual arts centre in Drogheda, Republic of Ireland, and the FE McWilliam Gallery and Studio in Newry, a venue run by Banbridge District Council on the Northern Ireland side of the border. Their arts partnership, which sees them sharing their programme, is a flagship example of border cooperation and is heavily backed by EU funds.
It’s no surprise that the directors of both galleries are alarmed by the prospect of a hard Brexit, or indeed any split, that could spell the end of this level of close cooperation. Riann Coulter of FE McWilliam and Aoife Ruane of Highlanes joined similarly concerned colleagues at a meeting organised by the Irish Museums Association (IMA) in Belfast in October 2017 to discuss their fears. What worries them is that Brexit will cut off lucrative funding streams, frighten off skilled staff, bury museum managers in a mountain of bureaucracy and sever long-standing ties with colleagues on the other side of the border.
“I get emotional about this issue,” says Coulter. “After a decade of looking across the border I worry that now we will have to look inwards or across the water for loans and expertise. That means expensive sea or air transport, which we can’t afford.”
Gina O’Kelly, the head of operations at the IMA, says Ireland is relatively small and museum resources tend to be on a modest scale. “The UK and the Republic of Ireland have been natural partners in Europe and this has brought us a number of benefits. People are concerned that those benefits are at risk.”
The referendum vote was unwelcome in a sector that had spent the two decades since the 1998 Peace Agreement building relationships. But the uncertainty engendered by the difficult negotiations between the UK government and the EU has deepened their concerns, O’Kelly adds.
European funding has eased the cooperation between museums and galleries in Ireland. Joint projects and collaborative bids have brought together colleagues and facilitated the exchange of ideas and support. And although no one can say exactly how much the sector has relied on EU funds, plenty of projects would never have got off the ground without it. These include the support for the galleries at Drogheda and Newry; the creation of the Orange heritage centres in Belfast and County Armagh; education programmes such as Entwined Histories, which saw schoolchildren from both parts of Ireland discussing their shared history; a cross-border archives project involving museums in Newry and Cavan; the Siege Museum in Derry; and the restoration of the SS Titanic’s supplies vessel the SS Nomadic.
Paddy Gilmore, the head of programmes for National Museums Northern Ireland, says peace funding, which has been a sign of the EU’s commitment to underwriting the 1998 agreement, has been a mainstay of cultural support and worth £1.5m over the past three or four years. Finding other revenue streams to replace this will not be easy.
Equally worrying is the UK’s departure from the customs union. Irish museums have become accustomed to swapping artefacts and exhibitions with a minimum of fuss, says John Ward, the chief executive of the fine art shipping company Maurice Ward Art Handling. A customs border will mean export declarations on all works of art, whether loaned or sold, leading to “a significant educational process” for a sector that has not had to deal with this for 40 years. Other regulatory issues that could arise from Brexit include differences over insurance, VAT, copyright or other standards – all of which will make museum loans and other types of cross-cultural exchange difficult.
Then there’s freedom of movement. Both Britain and Ireland have vowed to keep the common travel area, which allows each other’s citizens to travel freely within the two. But Judith Finlay, the registrar at the National Museum of Ireland, points out that many large museums have staff working on short-term contracts who travel back and forth between the UK and Ireland for exhibitions. How will they be affected? Immigration barriers based on earnings could also reduce the supply of skilled but low-paid staff.
And Coulter says that even if there are no immigration issues, staff who travel across the Irish border to work in museums fear that the return of checkpoints for customs purposes will make the daily commute impossible.
Some fear Brexit could have an impact on the delicate socio-ecological framework created for the public by museums to tackle controversial political histories.
“Museums in Northern Ireland have been adept at shared identities over the past few years,” says Sinead McCartan, the director of the Northern Ireland Museums Council. “They have been using collections to explore contested issues in that shared space. Our concern is that a divergent political context could have an impact on our ability to do that in future.”
But there is room for some optimism. Ruane says that partnerships built up over decades will endure, whether funded or not.
“Relationships between curators, the sharing of ideas and support – that will carry on,” she says. “They will not be subject to complex legal issues caused by Brexit. It will be harder, but we will get on with it.”
Some local authority museums along the Irish border may still have access to EU special border funding streams and there are other funds open to partnerships between EU and non-EU countries, a group that the UK will join once Brexit is complete. Collaboration with all-Ireland bodies such as Tourism Ireland will continue and may even strengthen in the post-Brexit landscape.
Hugh Maguire, a heritage consultant and the former director of Limerick’s Hunt Museum, suggests that the museum sector has always displayed resilience in the face of adversity. “We will go through a period when it’s going to be hell, but then there will be a new normal.”
To meet the challenge, museums in Ireland, north and south, are busy creating a strategy to deal with the fallout of leaving the EU. They believe that a united sector, working together, could wrest a more positive outcome from policymakers.
The IMA is creating a taskforce to conduct a Brexit audit, which will measure the pros and cons of the UK’s withdrawal, while lobbying ministers on both sides of the border for a better deal for the sector. It’s a huge task, admits O’Kelly at the IMA. But as Noel Kelly, the director of Visual Artists Ireland, a company that represents artists, told the October meeting of the IMA: “We need to raise our collective voice. We can’t wait for Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker to worry about us. We need to take control of the agenda ourselves.”
Patrick Kelly is a freelance writer. The Museums Association Conference & Exhibition is being held in Belfast on 8-10 November.
Modern Experiments was the work of Belfast-born Susan MacWilliam, who divides her time between her home town and Dublin. She teaches at the Irish National College of Art and Design in the Republic of Ireland, but has represented Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale and was awarded a commission for Derry during its time as UK City of Culture in 2013. The exhibition, which recently ended its tour at the Butler Gallery Kilkenny, was the product of a long-standing programme that brings together the Highlanes Gallery, a municipal gallery and visual arts centre in Drogheda, Republic of Ireland, and the FE McWilliam Gallery and Studio in Newry, a venue run by Banbridge District Council on the Northern Ireland side of the border. Their arts partnership, which sees them sharing their programme, is a flagship example of border cooperation and is heavily backed by EU funds.
It’s no surprise that the directors of both galleries are alarmed by the prospect of a hard Brexit, or indeed any split, that could spell the end of this level of close cooperation. Riann Coulter of FE McWilliam and Aoife Ruane of Highlanes joined similarly concerned colleagues at a meeting organised by the Irish Museums Association (IMA) in Belfast in October 2017 to discuss their fears. What worries them is that Brexit will cut off lucrative funding streams, frighten off skilled staff, bury museum managers in a mountain of bureaucracy and sever long-standing ties with colleagues on the other side of the border.
“I get emotional about this issue,” says Coulter. “After a decade of looking across the border I worry that now we will have to look inwards or across the water for loans and expertise. That means expensive sea or air transport, which we can’t afford.”
Gina O’Kelly, the head of operations at the IMA, says Ireland is relatively small and museum resources tend to be on a modest scale. “The UK and the Republic of Ireland have been natural partners in Europe and this has brought us a number of benefits. People are concerned that those benefits are at risk.”
The referendum vote was unwelcome in a sector that had spent the two decades since the 1998 Peace Agreement building relationships. But the uncertainty engendered by the difficult negotiations between the UK government and the EU has deepened their concerns, O’Kelly adds.
European funding has eased the cooperation between museums and galleries in Ireland. Joint projects and collaborative bids have brought together colleagues and facilitated the exchange of ideas and support. And although no one can say exactly how much the sector has relied on EU funds, plenty of projects would never have got off the ground without it. These include the support for the galleries at Drogheda and Newry; the creation of the Orange heritage centres in Belfast and County Armagh; education programmes such as Entwined Histories, which saw schoolchildren from both parts of Ireland discussing their shared history; a cross-border archives project involving museums in Newry and Cavan; the Siege Museum in Derry; and the restoration of the SS Titanic’s supplies vessel the SS Nomadic.
Paddy Gilmore, the head of programmes for National Museums Northern Ireland, says peace funding, which has been a sign of the EU’s commitment to underwriting the 1998 agreement, has been a mainstay of cultural support and worth £1.5m over the past three or four years. Finding other revenue streams to replace this will not be easy.
Equally worrying is the UK’s departure from the customs union. Irish museums have become accustomed to swapping artefacts and exhibitions with a minimum of fuss, says John Ward, the chief executive of the fine art shipping company Maurice Ward Art Handling. A customs border will mean export declarations on all works of art, whether loaned or sold, leading to “a significant educational process” for a sector that has not had to deal with this for 40 years. Other regulatory issues that could arise from Brexit include differences over insurance, VAT, copyright or other standards – all of which will make museum loans and other types of cross-cultural exchange difficult.
Then there’s freedom of movement. Both Britain and Ireland have vowed to keep the common travel area, which allows each other’s citizens to travel freely within the two. But Judith Finlay, the registrar at the National Museum of Ireland, points out that many large museums have staff working on short-term contracts who travel back and forth between the UK and Ireland for exhibitions. How will they be affected? Immigration barriers based on earnings could also reduce the supply of skilled but low-paid staff.
And Coulter says that even if there are no immigration issues, staff who travel across the Irish border to work in museums fear that the return of checkpoints for customs purposes will make the daily commute impossible.
Some fear Brexit could have an impact on the delicate socio-ecological framework created for the public by museums to tackle controversial political histories.
“Museums in Northern Ireland have been adept at shared identities over the past few years,” says Sinead McCartan, the director of the Northern Ireland Museums Council. “They have been using collections to explore contested issues in that shared space. Our concern is that a divergent political context could have an impact on our ability to do that in future.”
But there is room for some optimism. Ruane says that partnerships built up over decades will endure, whether funded or not.
“Relationships between curators, the sharing of ideas and support – that will carry on,” she says. “They will not be subject to complex legal issues caused by Brexit. It will be harder, but we will get on with it.”
Some local authority museums along the Irish border may still have access to EU special border funding streams and there are other funds open to partnerships between EU and non-EU countries, a group that the UK will join once Brexit is complete. Collaboration with all-Ireland bodies such as Tourism Ireland will continue and may even strengthen in the post-Brexit landscape.
Hugh Maguire, a heritage consultant and the former director of Limerick’s Hunt Museum, suggests that the museum sector has always displayed resilience in the face of adversity. “We will go through a period when it’s going to be hell, but then there will be a new normal.”
To meet the challenge, museums in Ireland, north and south, are busy creating a strategy to deal with the fallout of leaving the EU. They believe that a united sector, working together, could wrest a more positive outcome from policymakers.
The IMA is creating a taskforce to conduct a Brexit audit, which will measure the pros and cons of the UK’s withdrawal, while lobbying ministers on both sides of the border for a better deal for the sector. It’s a huge task, admits O’Kelly at the IMA. But as Noel Kelly, the director of Visual Artists Ireland, a company that represents artists, told the October meeting of the IMA: “We need to raise our collective voice. We can’t wait for Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker to worry about us. We need to take control of the agenda ourselves.”
Patrick Kelly is a freelance writer. The Museums Association Conference & Exhibition is being held in Belfast on 8-10 November.