Paul Mainds is the chief executive and a trustee of the River & Rowing Museum Foundation, Henley-on-Thames
Yes: In their search for sustainability, few museums can afford to ignore important revenue streams. Offering corporate entertainment is financially significant and also attracts new audiences. The corporate world can, in itself, make a contribution to the life of a museum that goes beyond the money that it may spend.
There can be a sharing of ideas, expertise and contacts, which can be mutually beneficial and also fulfil the museum's responsibility to play a wider part in society. Such opportunities should be welcomed and not spurned.
Also, at a personal level, guests from the corporate world are, in their own right, members of the public who have the family, educational and personal interests which museums should surely wish to court.
Clearly the interests of the other public visitors, as well as the objects themselves, must be respected and any policy must achieve this. Any guidelines are bound to reflect the local conditions, but they must all include good communication with other visitors so that they understand why the gallery is closed and what else they can do during the time that others are using the space.
Ideally, the maximum time limit should be no more than one hour. This becomes an issue of management rather than choice, as museums must seek to provide a range of services at times and in ways that all audiences wish.
Nick Dodd is the chief executiveof Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust
No: It is perfectly possible to have both private hire and public use, at different times and also in different places, but the corporate business is there to assist and develop the intrinsic value of the museum, not to substitute it.
There cannot be many museums able to lose a functioning gallery to corporate hire without a decline in the quality and variety of what is on offer to the public.
While there may be exceptions in the trust or private museum sector, the principle has to be that the public has an absolute right to access displayed collections held in their name in a museum at the times advertised.
In compromising this principle, public value needs to be considered alongside the private. It is an issue of entitlement and of exclusion as well as hard cash.
At publicly-funded museums and galleries, in making a decision to close for corporate hire over public use we have to weigh up the level of exclusion that the visitor suffers against the short-term financial gain.
We hold collections 'in trust'. In honouring that trust, full public access, for which every taxpayer already pays a 'hire fee', should take precedence over all more limited forms of access.
In an age where we argue at the highest level for the value of museums as social capital, and where the politics of cultural entitlement may soon empower the user more than the provider, it may also be against our own collective long-term interests to put private hire before public inclusion.
Yes: In their search for sustainability, few museums can afford to ignore important revenue streams. Offering corporate entertainment is financially significant and also attracts new audiences. The corporate world can, in itself, make a contribution to the life of a museum that goes beyond the money that it may spend.
There can be a sharing of ideas, expertise and contacts, which can be mutually beneficial and also fulfil the museum's responsibility to play a wider part in society. Such opportunities should be welcomed and not spurned.
Also, at a personal level, guests from the corporate world are, in their own right, members of the public who have the family, educational and personal interests which museums should surely wish to court.
Clearly the interests of the other public visitors, as well as the objects themselves, must be respected and any policy must achieve this. Any guidelines are bound to reflect the local conditions, but they must all include good communication with other visitors so that they understand why the gallery is closed and what else they can do during the time that others are using the space.
Ideally, the maximum time limit should be no more than one hour. This becomes an issue of management rather than choice, as museums must seek to provide a range of services at times and in ways that all audiences wish.
Nick Dodd is the chief executiveof Sheffield Galleries and Museums Trust
No: It is perfectly possible to have both private hire and public use, at different times and also in different places, but the corporate business is there to assist and develop the intrinsic value of the museum, not to substitute it.
There cannot be many museums able to lose a functioning gallery to corporate hire without a decline in the quality and variety of what is on offer to the public.
While there may be exceptions in the trust or private museum sector, the principle has to be that the public has an absolute right to access displayed collections held in their name in a museum at the times advertised.
In compromising this principle, public value needs to be considered alongside the private. It is an issue of entitlement and of exclusion as well as hard cash.
At publicly-funded museums and galleries, in making a decision to close for corporate hire over public use we have to weigh up the level of exclusion that the visitor suffers against the short-term financial gain.
We hold collections 'in trust'. In honouring that trust, full public access, for which every taxpayer already pays a 'hire fee', should take precedence over all more limited forms of access.
In an age where we argue at the highest level for the value of museums as social capital, and where the politics of cultural entitlement may soon empower the user more than the provider, it may also be against our own collective long-term interests to put private hire before public inclusion.
