Spend, spend spend
Felicity Owen looks at whether the Lottery millions are going to the right places Civilisation if not Christendom has made great strides in England since the first millennium when the unfortunate King Ethelred was kept busy repelling northern invaders: 1,000 years on there is a rush of celebratory building designed with an eye as much to attracting tourists as to providing enlightenment. High on the list are the extended museums and galleries that with world-class collections confirm London as the greatest cultural city. Invalu- able funds are being provided by the National Lottery but rising running costs have yet to be faced; and in the regions over-optimistic revenue forecasts and flawed conception are resulting in some centres being virtually stillborn.
In the new spirit of co-operation, the National Gallery has exchanged property with the adjacent National Portrait Gallery, and with £12 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) the latter has been able to add 50 per cent more exhibition space and a roof-top restaurant with panoramic views. But the most spectacular May opening is Bankside's power station, Tate Modem, transformed by architects Herzog & de Meuron into a £134 million museum of modern art. Meanwhile Sir Nicholas Serota has relaunched his Mill- bank headquarters as Tate Britain. When the £32 million extension is completed in 2003, justice will be done to British artists of all periods, helped by loans already arriving from the Yale Center of British Art and Constables from their unhappy V&A eyrie.
Only a dynamic force like Serota could in four years have attracted international funds and benefactions for both the build- ings and collections, and organised an enlarged staff albeit with a burgeoning bureaucracy that threatens to swamp the core of scholars, recently depleted by the sad death of Leslie Parris. Some 2 million annual visitors are expected at each Tate and, having been presented with an inter- national attraction transforming Bankside, the Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, can hardly refuse Tate Modern 40 per cent of its running costs of £12 million–£13 million, the rest to be earned.
At the British Museum the removal of the British Library has led to major changes. Sir Norman Foster's brilliant £98 million Great Court scheme opens in December and will give London its first two-acre covered square. The restored Reading Room at the centre will open to the public as a reference library with shops and cafes on the perimeter. The appoint- ment of a managing director, Suzanna Tav- erne, has allowed Dr Robert Anderson to concentrate on the penny-pinched curatori- al side. This impressive young woman with a background in the City and a clear head has already cut through civil service prac- tices and is tuning the management for the introduction of a huge study centre nearby, the return of ethnographic displays from the Museum of Mankind, and further improvements to galleries by the 250th anniversary year, 2003.
The BM Development Trust has done wonders raising £107 million and motors on: the government grant remains at £34 million and Taverne will fight to balance 'Oh, for heaven's sake, Trevor — they don't do painters.' the books by doubling visitors' spending and re-deploying service staff until she has a compelling case for an increase. To a world cultural leader and our most popular museum already attracting more than 6 million people a year, the government must surely be generous.
To ensure free admission to all 17 cen- trally funded museums and galleries by 2001, £30 million has been set aside. Of those charging entry, the Royal Armouries, misled into expecting a million visitors at its new Leeds backwater, urgently needs another £1 million to avoid bankruptcy. The Imperial War Museum has a £17 million Holocaust exhibition wing opening this summer. Only the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, top attractions to families, the latter earning over 80 per cent of annual revenue, may prefer to relieve the exchequer by continuing to charge with generous concessions, thus retaining their entrepreneurial freedom.
The June opening of the Science Muse- um's dramatic £50 million Wellcome Wing will herald the departure of its exceptional director, Sir Neil Cossons, to English Her- itage. He may be revising his belief that the Dome will transform the public perception of exhibitions but he has high hopes of the new science centres in the regions. Compe- tition from these and shopping complexes thredten many of the over numerous muse- ums and galleries underfunded by their local authority, and certain visitor targets look unattainable without conscription.
Take the Tyne and Wear area, not known for its appetite for the visual arts, as an example. From a low-rate base the Council manages to support its award-win- ning and mainly free museum service, which comprises a dozen units. Although Newcastle's respected Laing Art Gallery and Discovery Museum need a facelift, welcoming staff and a lively educational programme at all venues ensure well over a million annual visitors. However, in May, the International Centre for Life opens, anticipating an incredible 250,000 visitors a year. The Centre is part of a development that includes Newcastle University's Insti- tute of Human Genetics and a Bioscience Centre for companies in that field. In addi- tion, the Arts Council of England (ACE, a real misnomer), having already part-funded the £12 million admirable but struggling National Glass Centre at Sunderland and Sheffield's failing National Centre for Pop- ular Music, is responsible for the specula- tive £46 million restoration at Gateshead of the Baltic Flour Mills as Britain's largest art centre. It has also recently granted £40 million towards a £60 million Music Cen- tre, headquarters for the Northern Sinfonia and Folkworks, also across the Tyne.
As an expression of urban regeneration, this explosion of fine buildings is welcome to many locals who will no doubt content themselves with the exterior view when faced by admission charges of at least £5: it does nothing for social exclusion and a flood of tourists to the Tyne seems unlikely.
David Fleming, livewire head of the Arts Council's museums and galleries, can be forgiven a little schadenfreude if ACE breeds some northern white elephants in assuaging guilt for its Opera House gen- erosity, oblivious of the area's low spending power. He feels strongly that the HLF, the sanest Lottery agent, should fund the over- due modernisation of cultural institutions serving cities of over 200,000 and has formed a group of fellow directors to press this point. Lottery money, however, has also done little for the overworked staff: Serota, who speaks of his regional counter- parts as martyrs and has recently involved five galleries in a partnership scheme, is concerned about the lack of training and opportunity for future leaders. The increasingly effective Museums & Galleries Commission (soon to become the amorphous Museums, Libraries & Archives Council) should organise a man- agement course for senior staff of both national and non-national institutions, again financed by the HLF. This three- month sabbatical should include working time that would broaden staff experience and narrow the gap between the contrast- ing levels of expectation. While the govern- ment lacks any overall museum policy, Lottery millions must surely be used to cre- ate a higher degree of professionalism.
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