ARTS
Crafts
The shows must go on
Tanya Harrod reports on the crisis at the Crafts Council, threatened with the closure of its gallery and lack of funding for future exhibitions
The Crafts Council is currently staging an exhibition entitled London Amsterdam: New Objects from Britain and Holland, planned to coincide with the William and Mary tercentenary celebrations. There is a glossy catalogue paid for by the two Dutch collaborators. The exhibits look impressive' in the Crafts Council's beautiful gallery. Most of the work is avant-garde in craft terms, with sculptural ceramics by Gillian Lowndes and Gordon Baldwin and mini- malist jewellery by Dutch makers like Iene Ambar and Willem Honing. It is a fine, stimulating show: the pieces are for sale although it is clearly primarily educational in intention. But it belongs to the last series of exhibitions to be mounted by the Crafts Council at their own premises. Philistines — among whom we may include many fine-art critics — may find the news that the Crafts Council will not have a gallery cause for rejoicing. But for those who love craftsmanship in all its varied and complex manifestations this news will seem a grave blow.
In 1991 the Crafts Council lease on its offices and space at Waterloo Place comes to an end and they will have to look for a new site. All this has been known for a long time and if the last director, David Dougan, had carried out the task he was hired to do — to find new premises and embark on an active search for sponsorship — all might now be well. But he let the Council down and his resignation (with a 00,000 pay-off) left it in an exceptionally weak and vulnerable position. A horribly thorough Cabinet Office staff report put the leaderless Crafts Council under press- ure from the Office of Arts and Libraries to put itself in order.
In what 1 imagine to have been a state of mild panic the deputy director, Tony Ford, put together a five-year plan which apparently has the virtue of appearing realistic and workable. An earlier version drawn up by Dougan in March had been deemed unacceptable by the OAL. But Ford's plan, passed by the Council on 21 July, the day before the interviews for the new directorship, contains a bombshell. It suggests that the Crafts Council would
have to look for smaller premises after 1991 to cut costs and it therefore would be necessary to dispense with any kind of gallery and with any serious provision for funding exhibitions. Instead the Council intends to maintain a presence by having a bookshop and a small shop retailing craft work attached to its new offices. Of course there is a need for the Council to be visible rather than simply to retreat into the role of an administrative body but it is question- able whether it should be perceived as a shopkeeper competing with existing galler- ies. It already has a shop at the V & A and subsidises the excellent Contemporary Ap- plied Arts in Covent Garden. The five-year plan apparently does not abolish exhibitions — the exhibitions staff are retained (though one wonders if they would be replaced if they resigned) but they will have to find their own funding and exhibition venues. We are returning to the old days of the Crafts Advisory Com- mittee which put on occasional exhibitions at the V & A. There are to be far fewer exhibitions — at the most two a year — and in order to attract sponsorship they will have to have some element of the blockbuster. I have no doubt that fine exhibitions would result but they will necessarily concentrate on the history of the applied arts at the expense of contem- porary work. Of course the Crafts Council have always had historical shows but at present it is far more in touch with and better able to exhibit its youngest practi- tioners than the Arts Council. This hapPY state of affairs will not survive the demise of the gallery and direct funding: sponsors are notoriously uninterested in the un- known or the difficult.
The Crafts Council now has a director. Unsurprisingly it is Tony Ford, the co- author of the five-year plan. He has been with the Council for nine years, is well liked and knows the ropes. He will do his best to restore some of the confidence that vanished so rapidly under Dougan's lead- ership. There can be no doubt that he is regretful about the decision to lose the gallery. And of course for all the Crafts Council's brave talk of sponsorship what Is really required is a realistic grant from the OAL. It is curious how empty and hopeless these words look as I type them. As one distinguished member of the Crafts Coun- cil pointed out: `Sponsorship is a very expensive way of raising money. Taxation is a cheap way and I would prefer to pay for the Crafts Council through taxes.' Such an obvious and beautiful thought — that agencies for the arts should have their comparatively modest needs funded by taxation — seems very quaint today. But this is the moment to seek help before it too late. A well run, sensibly funded exhibitions policy is crucial to the well- being and prestige of the Crafts Council. And of course help with a new building, with the adjacent gallery space, and with the shows put on in the gallery should come from the OAL.
It is clearly up to Tony Ford to tell the OAL that the grant is inadequate, that a gallery is a vital adjunct to the Crafts Council, that enough cuts have been made and that the Crafts Council has a duty to elevate public taste and to encourage the best in our makers who are widely re- garded as the finest in the world. He might add that exhibitions are important — as important as retailing, as marketing, as the Council's magazine Crafts. When he has said all that and got a dusty answer he will have to embark on the costly business of finding sponsorship. What he must not do Is to continue to make small cuts and economies until the Crafts Council, already greatly diminished in recent years, Shrinks into oblivion.
Previous page
