Letters

This letter is prompted by the very welcome points made by Stephen Deuchar regarding curatorial expertise and Maurice Davies regarding collecting at a time of financial crisis.

Important positions, but there is a risk that these positions unintentionally polarise the situation on the ground, creating a mindset in which limited funds plus a lack of focus on generating curatorial knowledge equals a “let’s stop collecting” situation. What we should be doing is working more together to reach some solutions, particularly for collections of contemporary art.

This is the Contemporary Art Society’s (CAS) centenary year; we are in the business of generating new models and solutions that will sustain the development of contemporary collections and the centenary programme is an important time to generate new models for the future. Many of these ideas could be developed in partnership across the sector.

Thanks to funding from Arts Council England (ACE), we have established, in partnership with our member museums, two curatorial fellowships, one at the Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry, the other at the Castle Museum & Art Gallery, Nottingham.

Also funded by ACE, and led by Wolverhampton Art Gallery, we are working with 20 collections-based organisations in the west Midlands to establish a self-sustaining curatorial network. There is much to say about this way of working: the circulation of ideas and knowledge, establishing a responsibility for mentorship, growing confidence and celebrating successful organisations.

We need to plan now for the sort of knowledge economy we wish to see in our regional public collections in the future. Ensuring that there are posts and opportunities available for the curators who are emerging from specialist streams of education and training is vital or we will lose them from the sector and the country.

The CAS’s acquisition scheme, while offering small sums to make new purchases, is rich in the research for those collections curators who have the time. Membership to the CAS’s National Network (now recognised as the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council’s Subject Specialist Network) offers a more consistent programme and has a far broader reach.

The two questions that we continually juggle are: How can we use new curatorial strategies to ignite the potential of public collections of modern and contemporary art? And, how to bring artists closer to the opportunities and challenges that collections offer?

Lucy Byatt, head of programmes, Contemporary Art Society, London

Museums Journal May 2010, p16

www.museumsassociation.org, 29 April 2010

 
You know when you’re getting old when judges seem to be getting younger. Still, the report about regime change and a radical renewal within the European Museum Forum, may have given the misleading and rather ageist impression of the judges who recently resigned.

Half of the judges who sadly decided to step down were relatively new, myself included, serving on average less than three years – a lot less than the 30 that was mentioned.

Javier Pes, former European Museum Forum judge, London

Museums Journal April 2010, p11

With the coalition government now settled into Number 10, it seems an opportune moment to update Museums Journal readers on the progress of …Love Museums, the Museums Association’s latest project designed to help museums win friends and influence people by better communicating what they do.

The first phase of the project has seen us travel the length and breadth of the UK to deliver advocacy training workshops to staff in the sector. Nearly 200 people joined us to define advocacy, think about advocacy planning, develop ideas for their own organisations and consider the national context for advocacy.

Sixty-six per cent of participants rated their previous advocacy experience as average or below, but following the sessions 80 per cent of participants said they had significantly increased their advocacy knowledge. And over 90 per cent rated the session as good or excellent.

Everyone who joined us spent time thinking about how they can embed advocacy in what they do (and made a firm commitment to it). The workshops might have finished, but it doesn’t end there…

We’ve listened to what people at the sessions were interested in and what they want to know more about. We’re now in the process of developing user-friendly resources for the …Love Museums webpage.

In April we launched Museums and the Election, a practical guide designed to help the museum sector understand the pre-election period and consider how to take advantage of it. We’ll be unveiling more resources between now and the end of August. Look out for the first update at the end of July that will include, among other things, a fact sheet demonstrating why ‘Tourists…Love Museums’.

The changing political and economic landscape has provided an interesting backdrop to the …Love Museums project and has not been far from people’s minds.

It’s reminded us how crucial it is to articulate the value of museums to the people that matter. No museum can afford to be an island. As we move forward, we’re confident that an energised and engaged community of museum advocates are now well placed to make the case for their organisations and the sector as a whole.

Stacey Arnold, advocacy associate, Museums Association (on placement through the Cultural Leadership Programme)
www.museumsassociation.org/lovemuseums


- A History of the World: how the British Museum forged new partnerships
- Interview with Julie Finch, director of Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives
- A survey of public art collections in Scotland
- Reviews: Borders Textile Museum, Hawick; Discover Greenwich, London; Gallery of Costume, Platt Hall, Manchester


- How to carbon footprint your museum
www.museumpractice.org