Our uncivilised museums
Jo Grimond
It is time we stopped the competitive stuffing of our public galleries and museums With pictures, porcelain, furniture, etc. at the expense of the tax payers. It is one of the Most disheartening examples of bureauc
ratic blight. It is also one of the less attractive forms of nationalism. The Rembrandts, and Titians, the Turners and Monets and Gainsboroughs are not going to be torn up if a British gallery doesn't get them — but, unless there is money to save them, many beautiful buildings will be torn down. Many selfless men devoted to art —I think al Particular of the late Lord Crawford writing on his knee to beg subscriptions for biane and Actaeon —have expended themselves on raising money to keep pictures in Britain. But the motive behind this expenditure on buying more and more objects can sometimes be the love of prestige rather Man of beauty. It is the misers' avarice. It is the pedants' hoarding instinct, the stamp collectors itch to complete his set or have More penny blacks than anyone else in the World. To many trustees and curators it does not seem to matter that they commit a ekrime against civilisation by condemning hundreds of pictures which could give Pleasure in daylight to the darkness of cellars.
I was met with courteous incredulity when I expressed mild disappointment that tile modern —or fairly modern — Scottish Pictures in the Glasgow Gallery were not to be seen for a year or more. The Scottish Galleries have accepted Dr Lillie's pictures. They cannot hope to show them all. They will be 'available on request'. Many of these Pictures are just the sort which would be lost la a gallery but would give great pleasure spread around schools, or perhaps Post Ifices — places which the public can enter. Will be said, of course, that quantities of Pictures must be available in one place for Z.searchers. I refuse to believe ichelangelo worked for research. Damn Msearchers. Soon no one will read a novel
Play the piano without being dignified by
e name of researcher — and provided with a grant And the ultimate degradation is
reached when the pension funds, for the y trade unionists whose leaders clamour or more industrial investment, buy pictures as though they were gold bars. Nor are private people or public insInutions other than galleries incapable of looking after pictures, and too much can be arIe of the need to have them in specially signed show-rooms. The Prado has, I pelieve, given up buying pictures. Hurrah 'or the Prado. No one can believe that it ould be a better gallery if it had another aundred pictures. Size is the golden calf of the Barbarians. Many galleries are already too big. I would stop all grants to all major galleries for more purchases until at least they either show or dispose of the pictures they have. No director who hoarded would get even an MBE. Pictures will not be burnt if they go to America; they may, in fact, even be more widely appreciated.
It is a curious commentary on the western world that it should raise such a storm about pictures, furniture, china, but allow Venice to disintegrate. But then Venice does not bolster anyone's prestige. There is no vested interest in saving it. I know the sums expended on buying works of art would not go far in Venice. But, nevertheless, they indicate mistaken values. Nor are the sums so small. I calculate that the major art galleries will receive around al million in 1977-78, including unspent balances and so on. The original grant to the National Gallery alone was nearly £1 million. And I would have thought that the art schools had a prior claim on what money is available: they have played a significant role in contemporary art.
Of course there are occasions when galleries should be able to buy, but it is becoming a vested interested with little regard for the general well-being of the arts. And most of the arguments for galleries clinging to pictures are highly selfish. It will be said that these purchases are a good investment. That seems to rue a bogus argument — for they are surely not bought as part of the reserves at the Bank of England, nor are they saleable. Of course there is a case forkeeping some works of art in their native countries and surroundings. But that is hardly an argument that the British can deploy. We carried off most of our treasures in pictures from Europe — not to mention the Elgin marbles. Our galleries have no intention of sending them back. If, in fact, there were a proposal for the British galleries and Royal collections to club togher to send a selection of Canalettos back to Venice I would support that. It would give immense pleasure to the thousands of tourists who visit Venice if they could see Canalettos and Guardis of the canals on the Grand Canal itself.
I was somewhat shocked by the lack of magnaminity shown by art professionals and their sponsors during the controversy over Lane's pictures. He clearly intended them for Dublin but the British fist was very tight: you might expect trustees and curators to take a large and generous view; or, then again you might not. To claim that pictures painted for Italian churches or furniture designed for French palaces are part of 'our heritage' is bunkum. It is an excuse for hoarding. If they are part of anyone's heritage it is the heritage of Italy, France or the western world.
Money should be available to keep pictures and furnishings in houses for which they were designed, or where they are peculiarly appropriate. But often museums and galleries are all too eager to carry them off. The Scottish Museum was prepared to go to any length short of larcency to get its hands on the Shetland treasure, which no stretch of imagination could claim was anything to do with Edinburgh. The Victoria and Albert helps sometimes and the National Trust do an excellent job — both might well be more lavishly supported — but on the whole museums take more out of houses than they put back.
As it is, this competitive buying with public money or for purposes of tax avoidance has created a false market. Governments should get together to stop it. Or they should tax the purchaser on all individual pieces in excess, say, of £50,000. Galleries themselves might well come to some agreement among themselves. But at the moment the effect of more public money being made available, directly by grant or indirectly by tax concessions, is to drive up prices still further than they would in any case go through inflation. Nor is it clear what the ethics of the art market are. If two galleries employ the same agent, as has happened, he may persuade the poorer to drop out; the public may gain through a lower price but the seller loses. And the money which goVernments saved by refusing to finance the art industry could be used to better purpose. Of course there are smaller galleries and new galleries outside the metropolis which still need help. But the publicity about Ben Truman, the Stubbg, the Canalettos, seems to me only to encourage policies which waste money and obscure the appalling danger of destruction which is the serious threat to our real heritage.
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