Bullingdon, the minister’s special adviser on culture, called me in to his office last week. “Jeremy says that, now ACE has taken over the little museums, it is time to boil them like frogs,” he told me.
“We are looking for a national museum director – an unprincipled toady, a spineless sleazeball, a venal quisling, but eloquent – to persuade the sector that, contrary to all evidence, they should be grateful to the arts council. I won’t pretend you were our first choice.”
So last week I turned up to the first arts council boot camp for museum recalcitrants at a former youth rehabilitation centre on Romney Marsh.
All Ed’s arts pals were there, including Josie Pearshaped of the Institute of Perverse Ideas, and Tory artists Tracy Pinky and Grayson Perky, arguing as ever about who is richest and prettiest.
Josie started by introducing her mindwarp concept – that the arts is all about believing things that aren’t true.
I then explained that the MLA had a secret plan to destroy museums, which Ed had discovered and ACE had prevented.
Then Alan Davey spoke, with a ghastly smile that would frighten the devil himself. He asked one regional museum director what the purpose of museums is. The foolish woman said “to serve the public.” Unbelievable!
“No, no, no,” shouted Alan. “It is artistic excellence. We are here to serve the ARTIST!” The woman was invited to go immediately to the primal scream therapy hut.
At the end of the day, people from the little museums stood and intoned: “I was a miserable museum worm, burrowing in the dark. Now I am an arts bird, soaring high.” Job done!
“We are looking for a national museum director – an unprincipled toady, a spineless sleazeball, a venal quisling, but eloquent – to persuade the sector that, contrary to all evidence, they should be grateful to the arts council. I won’t pretend you were our first choice.”
So last week I turned up to the first arts council boot camp for museum recalcitrants at a former youth rehabilitation centre on Romney Marsh.
All Ed’s arts pals were there, including Josie Pearshaped of the Institute of Perverse Ideas, and Tory artists Tracy Pinky and Grayson Perky, arguing as ever about who is richest and prettiest.
Josie started by introducing her mindwarp concept – that the arts is all about believing things that aren’t true.
I then explained that the MLA had a secret plan to destroy museums, which Ed had discovered and ACE had prevented.
Then Alan Davey spoke, with a ghastly smile that would frighten the devil himself. He asked one regional museum director what the purpose of museums is. The foolish woman said “to serve the public.” Unbelievable!
“No, no, no,” shouted Alan. “It is artistic excellence. We are here to serve the ARTIST!” The woman was invited to go immediately to the primal scream therapy hut.
At the end of the day, people from the little museums stood and intoned: “I was a miserable museum worm, burrowing in the dark. Now I am an arts bird, soaring high.” Job done!
