One MLA adviser receives the salary of four curatorial assistants
I have just finished looking at some of the jobs advertised on the web for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in Birmingham and I feel disgusted and thoroughly demoralised.
It would be bad enough if I could say that this quango has done little beyond dream up new excuses to pay themselves higher salaries but, on the contrary, they have done a great deal of harm.
Five years ago I was working in Yorkshire, where the independent Yorkshire Museums, Libraries and Archives Council was doing a very useful job supporting local initiatives, training courses, and grants led by Barbara Woroncow and a small team on salaries comparable with those working in the museums they served.
Now, that has all been swept away and in its place we see flannel jobs like excellence, improvement and innovation policy adviser on £42,000-plus based in the MLA ivory tower in Birmingham. There was also a similar, more senior, job being advertised at £52,000-plus per annum.
That's as much as four times the salary of a curatorial assistant in one of our museums and I bet that the average curatorial assistant will do more work of lasting value in a year than several of these quango posts combined.
The Museums Association (MA) is again beating the drum about salaries in the profession. If there were fewer people being paid ridiculously high salaries for nonsense jobs or unnecessary tiers of bureaucratic management, there might be more money left to pay decent salaries to the people who actually entertain and educate the visitors to our museums or look after our priceless heritage.
Similarly, I see that once you take into account travel and accommodation in one of the recommended hotels it will cost you, or your employer, close to £1,000 to fully participate in this year's MA conference.
When you work in a museum struggling to get grants for a couple of hundred here and a couple of hundred there to make any sort of progress, you despair to see such sums being diverted from core work in museums for the annual bunfight.
Erik Blakeley, curator/manager Staffordshire Regiment Museum, Lichfield
Vox not so pop
Did other readers of the Museums Journal find it odd that all of the vox pop (Museums Journal June 2008, p21) interviewees were women? I certainly did. If female board representation is to be improved, it will only happen with the acceptance/enthusiasm of male board members, directors and funding bodies whose influence in regard to appointees is not negligible.
I know that women can be and are effective board members, although their manner of involvement and their approach to this type of work is often different but complementary to that of male colleagues.
However, to relate board representation to the numbers of women involved in the sector is not helpful; useful contributions to all aspects of museum work can't be about percentages (too simplistic), but about identifying those able to offer relevant expertise, time, commitment and understanding of a complex business.
Perhaps incremental progression within board membership might be a useful means of assessing the suitability of candidates new to this area.
As far as I am aware, admirable contributions/results within small trusts are rarely assessed and considered as preparation for the next tier, and the forms and lists which supposedly offer transparency may well deter busy but well-qualified candidates, whatever their gender or background.
Throughout the voluntary sector there is a shortage of well-qualified committee and board members and the reasons for this need investigation alongside the other issues raised by your vox pop respondents.
Valerie Cumming, chairman, Olive Matthews Collection, Chertsey Museum, Surrey
Argument for design
I received a book the other day that reminded me of how much I enjoyed my time as an in-house museum designer from 1974 to 1988 when I left (the now defunct) Geological Museum to go freelance. For a designer the creative interaction behind-the-scenes between the artists, craftspeople, technicians, inventors and sculptors was a huge part of that pleasure.
One of those artists was Michael Copus, a book about whom has been produced by his wife, Jane Furst. Her book shows very clearly the artist that hid behind the muralist, working often precisely to commission.
I remember seeing him painting a mural while a senior scientist stood at his shoulder saying "a bit more of this on the right there and a bit less of that on the left". And Michael, whose talent as an artist was at least equal to that of the demanding academic, patiently produced the image that was required.
Sculptors like Philip Jackson, now internationally recognised for his public monuments and sculpture, produced exquisite scale models. The fine technical team at the Natural History Museum, Adrian Wood and the late Arnold Bellamy, made things work that really had no right to work at all.
I feel sad that IT has taken over 90 per cent of these skills. Images are manipulated digitally; holograms are replacing reality. Nothing much seems to have been learned about print sizes - I still see visitors crouching low or stretching to read labels and captions.
Am I right to be sad? Perhaps not, but as I observed and was active at the birth of what is now the modern museum exhibition I feel certain proprietorial pangs. I, and many others, recorded what we had learned but I am not sure that it has been remembered or read.
I am no Luddite but I worry that some magic has gone, never to be replaced. Look at Jane Furst's book and at the exquisite illustrations. Try and find the magnificent dioramas that once graced the Geological Museum, look through the glass of a showcase and ask yourself why you bang your head as you try to read the label.
Go round a new exhibition of paintings and wonder why you cannot read the text below the picture without obscuring someone else's view of it. Where are the in-house design teams to do the necessary research on methods of presentation and visitor reaction? The knowledge and the technology now exist to design and produce the perfect museum. Where is it?
Giles Velarde wrote Designing Exhibitions, first edition Design Council 1988, republished by Ashgate in 2001
What about us?
Regarding The List (Museums Journal June 2008, p73): I was pleased to see that you mentioned that the Imperial War Museum won the Large Visitor Attraction at the Enjoy England Excellence Awards 2008 - but why no mention of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who they shared the award with, or indeed us, Enjoy England's Best Small Visitor Attraction? Surely we should be celebrating museums' successes?
Amelia Foster, museum director, The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, Buckinghamshire
I have just finished looking at some of the jobs advertised on the web for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in Birmingham and I feel disgusted and thoroughly demoralised.
It would be bad enough if I could say that this quango has done little beyond dream up new excuses to pay themselves higher salaries but, on the contrary, they have done a great deal of harm.
Five years ago I was working in Yorkshire, where the independent Yorkshire Museums, Libraries and Archives Council was doing a very useful job supporting local initiatives, training courses, and grants led by Barbara Woroncow and a small team on salaries comparable with those working in the museums they served.
Now, that has all been swept away and in its place we see flannel jobs like excellence, improvement and innovation policy adviser on £42,000-plus based in the MLA ivory tower in Birmingham. There was also a similar, more senior, job being advertised at £52,000-plus per annum.
That's as much as four times the salary of a curatorial assistant in one of our museums and I bet that the average curatorial assistant will do more work of lasting value in a year than several of these quango posts combined.
The Museums Association (MA) is again beating the drum about salaries in the profession. If there were fewer people being paid ridiculously high salaries for nonsense jobs or unnecessary tiers of bureaucratic management, there might be more money left to pay decent salaries to the people who actually entertain and educate the visitors to our museums or look after our priceless heritage.
Similarly, I see that once you take into account travel and accommodation in one of the recommended hotels it will cost you, or your employer, close to £1,000 to fully participate in this year's MA conference.
When you work in a museum struggling to get grants for a couple of hundred here and a couple of hundred there to make any sort of progress, you despair to see such sums being diverted from core work in museums for the annual bunfight.
Erik Blakeley, curator/manager Staffordshire Regiment Museum, Lichfield
Vox not so pop
Did other readers of the Museums Journal find it odd that all of the vox pop (Museums Journal June 2008, p21) interviewees were women? I certainly did. If female board representation is to be improved, it will only happen with the acceptance/enthusiasm of male board members, directors and funding bodies whose influence in regard to appointees is not negligible.
I know that women can be and are effective board members, although their manner of involvement and their approach to this type of work is often different but complementary to that of male colleagues.
However, to relate board representation to the numbers of women involved in the sector is not helpful; useful contributions to all aspects of museum work can't be about percentages (too simplistic), but about identifying those able to offer relevant expertise, time, commitment and understanding of a complex business.
Perhaps incremental progression within board membership might be a useful means of assessing the suitability of candidates new to this area.
As far as I am aware, admirable contributions/results within small trusts are rarely assessed and considered as preparation for the next tier, and the forms and lists which supposedly offer transparency may well deter busy but well-qualified candidates, whatever their gender or background.
Throughout the voluntary sector there is a shortage of well-qualified committee and board members and the reasons for this need investigation alongside the other issues raised by your vox pop respondents.
Valerie Cumming, chairman, Olive Matthews Collection, Chertsey Museum, Surrey
Argument for design
I received a book the other day that reminded me of how much I enjoyed my time as an in-house museum designer from 1974 to 1988 when I left (the now defunct) Geological Museum to go freelance. For a designer the creative interaction behind-the-scenes between the artists, craftspeople, technicians, inventors and sculptors was a huge part of that pleasure.
One of those artists was Michael Copus, a book about whom has been produced by his wife, Jane Furst. Her book shows very clearly the artist that hid behind the muralist, working often precisely to commission.
I remember seeing him painting a mural while a senior scientist stood at his shoulder saying "a bit more of this on the right there and a bit less of that on the left". And Michael, whose talent as an artist was at least equal to that of the demanding academic, patiently produced the image that was required.
Sculptors like Philip Jackson, now internationally recognised for his public monuments and sculpture, produced exquisite scale models. The fine technical team at the Natural History Museum, Adrian Wood and the late Arnold Bellamy, made things work that really had no right to work at all.
I feel sad that IT has taken over 90 per cent of these skills. Images are manipulated digitally; holograms are replacing reality. Nothing much seems to have been learned about print sizes - I still see visitors crouching low or stretching to read labels and captions.
Am I right to be sad? Perhaps not, but as I observed and was active at the birth of what is now the modern museum exhibition I feel certain proprietorial pangs. I, and many others, recorded what we had learned but I am not sure that it has been remembered or read.
I am no Luddite but I worry that some magic has gone, never to be replaced. Look at Jane Furst's book and at the exquisite illustrations. Try and find the magnificent dioramas that once graced the Geological Museum, look through the glass of a showcase and ask yourself why you bang your head as you try to read the label.
Go round a new exhibition of paintings and wonder why you cannot read the text below the picture without obscuring someone else's view of it. Where are the in-house design teams to do the necessary research on methods of presentation and visitor reaction? The knowledge and the technology now exist to design and produce the perfect museum. Where is it?
Giles Velarde wrote Designing Exhibitions, first edition Design Council 1988, republished by Ashgate in 2001
What about us?
Regarding The List (Museums Journal June 2008, p73): I was pleased to see that you mentioned that the Imperial War Museum won the Large Visitor Attraction at the Enjoy England Excellence Awards 2008 - but why no mention of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who they shared the award with, or indeed us, Enjoy England's Best Small Visitor Attraction? Surely we should be celebrating museums' successes?
Amelia Foster, museum director, The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, Buckinghamshire
