The long established and peculiarly English notion that science and technology are off the scale of the cultural spectrum feels as strong as ever.
And now museums are under the auspices of Arts Council England (ACE), which in turn is answerable to Ed Vaizey as minister for culture in England. Another minister, David Willetts, is responsible for universities and science.
Of course museums are not just about the arts, and universities don’t only teach and do research in science. These are only names, but they can suggest priorities. We ignore them at our peril.
I am quite comfortable with museums being in with ACE. It may not yet fully grasp what museums are about but it is listening and learning and is realistic about the difficult financial situation everyone faces.
The most encouraging feature of ACE’s new guidelines for major grants is that collections are back at the centre, just as they should be. Collections were once the defining feature of a museum, but have come to seem like a boring irrelevance to some.
The stuff, which is what visitors come to see, has been marginalised. Collections are what every museum should be caring for, displaying with style, explaining creatively, making accessible and generally shouting about on everyone’s behalf, but it has taken ACE to remind us of this.
Science museums are the worst offenders, often seeing their mission as being more to do with the public understanding of science than responsibility for cultural heritage. If science is seen as difficult to explain and something mainly for kids, that looks to the future not the past, the stage is set for wiping the historic artefacts off the map.
They are often considered too dull to display and are easily characterised as irrelevant to the modern world. So museums morph into hands-on science centres with few if any objects to worry about and a relentless dumbing down to focus on gizmos and gadgets.
None of the big new museum projects this year were science and technology-based. There may well be a strong arts bias in English culture, but there is no point moaning about it.
Let’s face it, arts and history museums are usually far better at communication and creative display, so the best hope for science and technology is to learn from their success.
The most innovative and intelligent science exhibition this year was the Wellcome’s brilliant Dirt show, which mixed performance art and medical history and incorporated museum collections.
It was a secret signpost to a more creative science museum future that still recognised our fascination with curious objects of the past.
My favourite exhibition of all time was the Thirties show organised by ACE at the Hayward Gallery in 1979 on British art and design. ACE’s main partner was the Victoria and Albert Museum but hundreds of objects were loaned by science and technology museums and from industry.
It made a big impression on me but sadly I’ve never seen anything like it since. ACE does not do exhibitions of this kind anymore but now it is facilitating the whole of the cultural sector and hopefully bringing science and technology in from the cold. It only needs a little imagination to give this some momentum.
The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern once generated electricity but now we seem content to use the shells of our industrial past for modern art installations. Why don’t we do more to bring art and science together again in museums? Blockbuster exhibition on the Power of Electricity anyone?
Oliver Green is a museum consultant and writer
And now museums are under the auspices of Arts Council England (ACE), which in turn is answerable to Ed Vaizey as minister for culture in England. Another minister, David Willetts, is responsible for universities and science.
Of course museums are not just about the arts, and universities don’t only teach and do research in science. These are only names, but they can suggest priorities. We ignore them at our peril.
I am quite comfortable with museums being in with ACE. It may not yet fully grasp what museums are about but it is listening and learning and is realistic about the difficult financial situation everyone faces.
The most encouraging feature of ACE’s new guidelines for major grants is that collections are back at the centre, just as they should be. Collections were once the defining feature of a museum, but have come to seem like a boring irrelevance to some.
The stuff, which is what visitors come to see, has been marginalised. Collections are what every museum should be caring for, displaying with style, explaining creatively, making accessible and generally shouting about on everyone’s behalf, but it has taken ACE to remind us of this.
Science museums are the worst offenders, often seeing their mission as being more to do with the public understanding of science than responsibility for cultural heritage. If science is seen as difficult to explain and something mainly for kids, that looks to the future not the past, the stage is set for wiping the historic artefacts off the map.
They are often considered too dull to display and are easily characterised as irrelevant to the modern world. So museums morph into hands-on science centres with few if any objects to worry about and a relentless dumbing down to focus on gizmos and gadgets.
None of the big new museum projects this year were science and technology-based. There may well be a strong arts bias in English culture, but there is no point moaning about it.
Let’s face it, arts and history museums are usually far better at communication and creative display, so the best hope for science and technology is to learn from their success.
The most innovative and intelligent science exhibition this year was the Wellcome’s brilliant Dirt show, which mixed performance art and medical history and incorporated museum collections.
It was a secret signpost to a more creative science museum future that still recognised our fascination with curious objects of the past.
My favourite exhibition of all time was the Thirties show organised by ACE at the Hayward Gallery in 1979 on British art and design. ACE’s main partner was the Victoria and Albert Museum but hundreds of objects were loaned by science and technology museums and from industry.
It made a big impression on me but sadly I’ve never seen anything like it since. ACE does not do exhibitions of this kind anymore but now it is facilitating the whole of the cultural sector and hopefully bringing science and technology in from the cold. It only needs a little imagination to give this some momentum.
The Turbine Hall at Tate Modern once generated electricity but now we seem content to use the shells of our industrial past for modern art installations. Why don’t we do more to bring art and science together again in museums? Blockbuster exhibition on the Power of Electricity anyone?
Oliver Green is a museum consultant and writer
