Museum collections in the UK are at risk of becoming “inert and lifeless” unless more money is invested for them to buy objects, according to a report.
An investigation by the historian Sir David Cannadine, published on Thursday, looks at museum collecting from the 1830s to the present day and paints a “deeply depressing” and “shocking” picture of the current funding landscape.
Cannadine highlights the widening gap between “stratospheric” art market prices paid by the world’s new billionaires while “the museums of the United Kingdom have experienced a decade of diminishing funding, and there are fears that this austerity will not end any time soon”.
The report says “the morale, the confidence and the numbers of curatorial staff” have been in “serious decline” for some time.
The report was commissioned by the Art Fund charity and the Wolfson Foundation to mark 40 years of collaboration between them to help bring art and objects in to public collections.
Cannadine’s report argues that not enough museums have any collecting strategy at all, and that they are reactive rather than proactive – only adding to collections when a gift or donation is made.
He uses case studies to show the benefits of positive collecting. They include the purchase by Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery of Christ Between Saint Paul and Saint Peter, a 14th century panel by the Sienese artist Pietro Lorenzetti bought for £1.6m that helped to demonstrate “increased confidence and ambition” in the lead-in to the submission to be 2017 city of culture.
Another is the Folkestone Creative Foundation and its art triennial, which has acquired or been loaned 27 public pieces including Cornelia Parker’s The Folkestone Mermaid.
The report acknowledges that proactively collecting is difficult given public spending on museums and their collections has decreased by 13% in real terms over the last decade, from £829m in 2007 to £720m. The situation is worse for museums that rely on local authority money.
It cites a recent study that shows the UK government spends less on culture in percentage terms than Denmark, France, Hungary or Latvia.“For museums to remain vibrant and vigorous institutions ... they must always be works in progress, which in turn means they should constantly be making new acquisitions, so that their collections remain dynamic and evolving rather than become inert and lifeless,” the report says.
Cannadine’s report contrasts sharply with a government-commissioned report by Neil Mendoza published last year that presented a more positive picture of the museum sector. Cannadine acknowledges that “instead of giving comfort and reassurance” his report “expresses anxiety and concern”.
The main conclusion is that more money needs to be invested in museums, particularly since the figures are only a tiny proportion of overall spending.
Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, called the report “timely and penetrating”. He added: “His concerns over the lack of public investment in the growth and care of our nation’s collections, and in the people responsible for them, should be heeded.”
Cannadine’s report acknowledges that many millions of objects in museum collections are kept in storage, rarely or never seen, and explores the vexed topic of whether deaccessioning is good or bad.
The report argues that a good case was the Imperial War Museum in London, which between 2010 and 2015 disposed of 69 firearms, 27,000 films and 40,000 books and pamphlets – all considered duplicates of what it had or which were in poor condition.
The bad case, it says, was the sale by Northampton Museum and Art Gallery of the ancient Egyptian statue Sekhemka for £15.8m.
At the launch of the Cannadine report Diane Lees, director-general of the Imperial War Museum, said Northampton “was a complete override of all of our professional standards ... it was an absolute tragedy in terms of damaging public trust for the rest of us. It will take a long time to forgive them.”
