Notes on the new culture white paper

The government has released a new white paper on culture and the arts – something that should be welcomed, since there hasn’t been anything on the subject for decades.

Not only are the arts and culture crucial for general wellbeing and a positive force in terms of education and development, they are hugely important for the economy of the UK – and not just in London.

But where the white paper could have been a positive force, even a quick reading illustrates that it’s full of empty promises, with words such as “support” and “encourage” rendered meaningless by lack of commitments on funding (even though it specifically quotes the Prime Minister as an enthusiast of “public-funded” arts and culture) and by the government’s own policies on, say, education, where it fully intends to remove all schools from having to teach the national curriculum that this paper says has importance to culture and arts.

The devil is always in the detail – or the lack thereof. So here goes, with an analysis of approximately half of the document in question.

On page 5, in the introduction by Ed Vaizey, the minister of state for culture, communications and creative industries, it states: “The increased appetite for culture was evident after Culture Secretary Chris Smith introduced free admission to museums in 2001.”

This is disingenuous, since 2001 saw a re-introduction of free admission.

The 1980s had seen attacks on cultural public spending, and pressures from the Conservative government of the day to introduce admission saw many museums and galleries do so.

Those that didn’t – including the British Museum, the Tate and the National Gallery – saw visitor numbers rise, while some that introduced charging saw substantial declines. The V&A introduced a £5 admission in 1997 and saw visitor numbers halved. (1)

And post-2001, the white paper says, that was repeated as, “in the next decade, visitor numbers soared” when admission fees were dropped.

The paper quotes Chancellor George Osborne in his last autumn statement as saying that our “creative industries are ... ‘one of the best investments we can make as a nation’.” So let's look for the investment.

It invokes the Bard, while Mr Vaizey himself also notes that it will “look at how culture can be used in place-making – and if ever a town was shaped by culture it is Stratford-on-Avon, where every year Shakespeare brings 4.9 million visitors to the town”. This is perhaps unfortunate, given what is happening in the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ – and not least Lancaster (2), where most museums are on the cusp of closure as a direct result of cuts to local government funding, even as the city tries to utilise its own extraordinary heritage to draw visitors in.

The introduction notes that: “When we look at new models for funding, we find that our experience with Shakespeare shows us the way. In Barking a community-focussed outdoor production of The Merchant of Venice is being crowdfunded to the tune of £80,000 and has raised £25,000 from a local property company”.

Yet only a few pages earlier, the first words in the white paper, after the contents, are:

“If you believe in publicly-funded arts and culture as I passionately do, then you must also believe in equality of access, attracting all, and welcoming all.

“Rt Hon David Cameron MP”

“Publicly-funded arts and culture” now appears to have a new definition – crowdfunding (which requires disposable income) and gifts from business.

On page 8, it states: “Everyone should enjoy the opportunities culture offers, no matter where they start in life.

“We will put in place measures to increase participation in culture, especially among those who are currently excluded from the opportunities that culture has to offer.

“In particular, we will ensure that children and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are inspired by and have new meaningful relationships with culture.”

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone would disagree with this.

The document explains that the new apprenticeships levy will mean that “our larger cultural organisations” will be expected to “take on apprentices and promote diversity and inclusion in the workplace.” Expectation, though, does not mean anything to back it up.

Funded bodies will need to publish strategies for increased access (which will cost them resources, of course).

On page 9, it states that the government will work with various bodies to promote culture as good for wellbeing, while a “new £40 million Discover England fund will showcase” the new programmes, including UK City of Culture, the Great Exhibition of the North.

It’s simply unfortunate that, at the same time, Lancashire County Council (as just one example) is planning on axing “40 libraries, five museums and two adult education centres”.

These include the cuts impacting on Lancaster, plus many, many more, including Blackpool tram maintenance, which will presumably not be good for an area that is already seriously struggling. (3)

All the subsequent talk of “new cultural partnerships” and a “Great Place scheme” and “Heritage Action Zones in England” is meaningless in the face of such devastating cuts and losses.

“We will encourage councils and owners to make empty business premises available to cultural organisations on a temporary basis.”

Because “cultural organisations” can just spring up suddenly and take over such premises and put something on without any other resources that require financing. Oh, wait – that’s where the crowdfunding and business patronage come in (not the PM’s “publicly-funded” bit, you note).

“Technology offers many opportunities to bring our culture to many more people in many different ways. We will work with our cultural institutions to make the UK one of the world’s leading countries for digitised public collections and use of technology to enhance the online experience of users.”

You won’t be able to look at anything in the flesh, but we’re going to digitise Lancaster’s collections so that you can look at them online after the museums are closed (it won’t help the city itself – unless you have to pay to view – and it’ll create and sustain bugger all in the way of jobs, but whoopy-do! It’s digital!

If this isn’t (an extreme but entirely logical interpretation of) the case, then it’s just more meaningless twaddle. Is there any evidence that people don’t go to museums and galleries because the ‘online digital experience’ isn’t what it could be?

Personally, I never use audio guides or anything other than brief notes when visiting an exhibition etc – because it gets in the way, in my opinion: as do those concentrating on such things rather than the exhibits.

Page 10 sees talk of the UK’s global “soft power” (not the bombs that gave us our “mojo” back) and of building on the “GREAT Britain campaign”, which has “increased investment” (it doesn’t say from where, but this will apparently attract “world-class events to the UK”).

This year, “we will support Shakespeare Lives”, although at no point does it elucidate on what concrete form that government “support” will take.

Page 11 notes that: “We have a successful model of cultural investment in which public funding works alongside earned income, private sector finance and philanthropy. This mixture of income streams provides the basis for a thriving and resilient cultural sector.”

Well, except where the public funding is withdrawn (see Lancashire etc), while it’s difficult to see how the ad hoc nature of the proposal that councils and businesses should loan out empty properties will in any way promote stability and, therefore, quality.

“We will continue to support growth through investment and incentives”. Interesting that it does not mention the public funding that it quotes the Prime Minister stressing.

Of course, there are forms of VAT refunds to help, while a new tax relief for museums and galleries is to be introduced next year (someone tell Lancashire to hang on!)

“We will establish a new Commercial Academy for Culture to improve and spread commercial expertise in the cultural sectors,” because making money is what culture is all about or should be – see, Lancashire: that’s been your problem.

There’ll be a new Private Investment Survey and “tailored reviews” and a “wide-ranging review of the museums sector” ...

The paper makes clear that investment in culture has “enormous economic value” (p13) – “in 2014, the economic contribution of museums, galleries, libraries and the arts was £5.4 billion,” while “heritage tourism accounts for 2% of GDP, contributing £26 billion per year” (p16) and “research by the British Council shows that cultural attractions are the most commonly mentioned factor in terms of what makes the UK an attractive place to visit while the arts was the third most commonly mentioned reason”.

On page 13: “it [the white paper] explains how the government will help to secure the role of culture in our society”.

As a whole, the paper makes much of saying that the arts and culture are important for all and should be available to all. You’ll find absolutely no disagreement here.

It says that all “state-funded schools” must provide a broad and balanced curriculum, nurturing the “spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils”. Again, no disagreement.

Apparently the national curriculum “sets the expectation” that pupils will study cultural subjects. “New, gold-standard GCSEs and A levels have been introduced in these subjects”. (p23)

Unfortunately, since academies and free schools do not have to teach the national curriculum, and all schools are set to be academised ...

In fact, let’s be even clearer. While academies and free schools are subject to that “broad and balanced curriculum”, the funding agreement simply means that “they are required to ensure their curriculum:

“includes English, maths and science;

“includes Religious Education, although the nature of this will depend on whether the school has a faith designation;

“secures access to independent, impartial careers advice for pupils in years 9-11; and

“includes sex and relationship education (SRE).” (4)

On page 22, it says: “The majority of the organisations supported by Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund are committed to working with children and young people, while schemes such as the Family Arts Festival and the Summer Reading Challenge are crucial in introducing young families to their local cultural organisations, especially libraries”.

Excellent. Except where those libraries have closed or are slated to close. See Lancashire – and beyond. As of August 2015, 337 libraries have closed in the UK since 2009-10. (5)

On page 23, we learn that there’s going to be a new “cultural citizens programme” [sic – I don’t know what happened to the possessive apostrophe]. The government will “encourage schools” to use the pupil premium for cultural education, while the Pupil Premium Awards will “highlight the benefits of cultural education”.

This is a close look at just under half the white paper. You can find it all here.

But it should be clear from this that, while the general tone is entirely agreeable, it is nothing to get excited about, for the reasons made very clear above. It’s all sleight of hand; appearing to give (a little) with one hand while removing a lot with the other.

Or perhaps the Bard might have suggested that it was full of a sort of “sound and fury, Signifying nothing”.

Sources

(1)        http://www.museumsassociation.org/campaigns/free-admission-and-the-lottery

(2)        http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/27/lancaster-city-culture-museum-closures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

(3)        http://www.garstangcourier.co.uk/news/local/revealed-40-libraries-five-museums-and-two-adult-education-centres-among-massive-cuts-announced-by-lancashire-county-council-1-7574160

(4)        https://montrose42.wordpress.com/tag/academies-dont-have-to-teach-the-national-curriculum/

(5) http://schoolsweek.co.uk/nicky-morgan-library-campaign-branded-a-hollow-gesture-after-closures/

The dealer who made the Impressionists

Paul Durand-Ruel, Renoir

If the first few months of the year nearly saw me miss Goya at the Courthauld and Dumas at the Tate Modern, I managed to get organised in time – just – to book almost a whole week in advance in order to catch Inventing Impressionism at the National Gallery, with just days to go.

It closes at the end of the month and had been one of my long-intended visits – with the intention being for the first few days. But such is life.

In the event, it was a delightful trip – and a fascinating one.

The exhibition is built around the life and work of Paul Durand-Ruel – not an artist himself, but one of the very first dealers in the way we understand that term today.

But more than a century before the Satchis got into the art market, Durand-Raul found himself representing artists who had been rejected by the Salon, the heart of France’s stifling art establishment.

Hanging the Laundry Out to Dry (18755), Morisot

We begin with a room that recreates (in part) one of the dealer’s own – complete with double doors decorated by Monet. It’s a room that is full of Renoir.

Now after last summer’s Paris art orgy, The Other Half and I felt that, if we never saw another Renoir it would be too soon.

But here were plenty more – and, in general, they did nothing to convince us that his work was anything other than garish, chocolate-box sentimental.

There’s an odd exception: a portrait of Durand-Ruel from 1910 is just such an example. But all too rare.

Poplars (1891), Monet

Since last July had finally seen a visit to the Orsay in Paris, we felt fairly well versed in Impressionism, but while we were able to reacquaint ourselves with some works – I got quite excited on approaching Monet’s Autumn Effect at Argenteuil (1873), which I recognised instantly and from a distance as being from the Courthauld – there was plenty of other works to see that we had not previously.

Durand-Ruel’s story is a fascinating one. But this excellently-curated exhibition leaves us with an indelible understanding of his impact on art.

For instance, he effectively invented the retrospective: one room is dedicated to this idea, bringing together a span of works by Monet – the first artist to have his career treated in such a way.

But it gets better.

This room includes six of the original 15 Poplars works of Monet’s that Durand-Ruel displayed in a single exhibition – again, the first of its kind.

Springtime (1872), Monet

Brought together from across the world, they are a joy to behold. The light captured in them is lovely.

Durand-Ruel didn’t necessarily have a great deal of success in selling the works he bough, often in bulk, from the Impressionists. But he ensured that became known, not just in France, but internationally.

If the likes of French literary icon Emile Zola was entranced by some of the ‘new painting – he described the dappling effect on the woman’s dress in Monet’s 1872 work, Springtime, as being like “sequins of light like drops of water”, the reaction of a critic from L’Echo Universel was more common, when he described the “sickness of Impressionism”.

The Child's Bath (1893), Cassatt

There is also plenty of Manet here, plus Degas (horses and ballet dancers) and some Morisot.

Pre-Impressionist context is provided early on with some Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Millet (a massive influence on Van Gogh) and Rousseau.

The latter’s View of Mont Blanc, seen from La Faucille (1863-67) is wonderful, even though compositionally it really should not work. But that’s great art for you – and an example of how there is so much to learn from studying any work.

This wasn’t just a case of ‘renewing acquaintances’. We encountered some ‘new’artists (for us).

Eugène Boudin (who first introduced Monet to painting outdoors) was older than most of the Impressionists. His delightful The Entrance to Trouville Harbour (1888) was purchased for the National Gallery instead of a painting by Monet – that his work had not been exhibited by Durand-Reul counted in his favour with the board, apparently.

The Entrance to Touville Harbour (1888), Boudin

Coincidentally, the Monet that it would have received in 1905 – Lavacourt Under Snow (circa 1878-81) – came into the gallery’s possession as part of a bequest in 1917.

And then there's Mary Cassatt, an American artist who lived most for most of her life in France, and represented here with The Child’s Bath from 1893.

She was to be valuable to Durand-Ruel in introducing him to many wealthy patrons in the US.

Indeed, the exhibition allows those of us on this side of the Atlantic to see a lot of works that usually hang in galleries in the US.

Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862), Manet

It also confirmed that I now know my Monet from my Manet (finally!).

You cannot see the likes of Manet’s Music in the Tuileries Gardens (1862) without marvelling at his use of black.

And you cannot see Monet without marvelling at the light.

It confirmed that a year has not changed the minds of either me or The Other Half regarding Renoir, although it did remind us how good Pissaro and Sisley were.

And it served as a further reminder that Impressionism has many faces.

It is an exhibition that is well worth catching. There’s a week left.

Would you trust G4S with a van Gogh?

Who wants to trust G4S with this?

It’s amazing what constitutes ‘public services’. We might be used to thinking in terms of the likes of emptying the bins and education and health care, but many more things that we take for granted come under that label too.

And many of them are increasingly under threat.

But amid the ongoing, ideological rush to sell off anything and everything – even at a cut price, as the Royal Mail debacle showed – it’s easy to forget that our culture is a public service, and it’s also under threat.

Libraries have been facing cuts for years, with politicians revealing an utter lack of understanding about the service by suggesting that volunteers could run them.

When I was doing my ’O and ’A levels at girls grammar schools in the 1970s and into the ’80s, becoming a librarian was something that was considered a good career, requiring a proper degree.

When did that morph into, ‘oh, some local volunteer can do it’?

Now that’s not an attack on volunteers, but it begs – or should beg – the question of when and how running a library ceased to need the level of education, training and skills that it did previously.

Is the writing on the wall for quality of visitor experience?

Inevitably, such an approach doesn’t simply deskill, but in doing so, it reduces the actual service. And that illustrates how little the service is understood and valued in the first place.

Now, it seems, plans are well under way to privatise visitor services – including security – at London’s National Gallery.

The gallery – just one of many such institutions that helps draw millions of tourists to the capital every year – points out that funding from government is falling, and that it needs to increase retail and commercial activities, including opening for some groups outside normal hours.

Even accepting all that, it’s difficult to see how privatisation will help – all it does is involve a private company that needs to make a profit. And one of the first things to happen when that’s the case is that wages are hit.

Claims that terms and conditions will be protected are meaningless, as has been illustrated in Doncaster, where venture capital company-owned Care UK made the right noises before taking over a contract for the care of vulnerable people with learning disabilities – and then, when the ink was barely dry on the contract, decided to slash the pay of the people who do the actual work of caring, start employing any new staff on minimum wage and deskill the workforce by, among other things, ordering staff to stop dealing with medical or violent situations and call 999 instead.

In other words, the profit is privatised and the debt socialised.

Should gallery staff know about the exhibits?

And then, of course, there’s the issue of slashed pay leading to more people needing in-work benefits – so the taxpayer is forking out to subsidise the profits of the private company.

The deskilling of the Doncaster workforce will be replicated at the National Gallery, as the Ministry of Curiosity blog, an “insider’s guide to London’s museum-centric life” explains that a lower-paid workforce will mean, “for the gallery and public, a transient workforce with less knowledge and expertise”.

The blog also makes a very interesting link between the recent decision to allowphotography in the gallery and the plans for privatisation.

According to the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), similar privatisation processesat the Imperial War Museum has led to experienced staff leaving, and anincrease in the use of zero-hours contracts.

The nation's favourite painting – left to the nation by Turner

The idea of putting security for some of the world’s greatest art treasures in the hands of the likes of G4S should be enough to horrify any sentient being.

What could possibly go wrong?

After all, the likes of G4S, Serco and others have great form on all manner of things, from security itself, to proving incapable of organising a piss-up in a brewery (or the 2012 Olympics, as they were known), to overcharging and false charging for services provided (or not).

But in this case, the atmosphere has been sullied further by union reps being hit witha gagging clause by the gallery – even though named reps were quoted in the press during disputes at the gallery in 2010 and 2012, with no apparent problem.

Of course, this isn’t the only bit of the “family silver” that is being primed for sell-off – the country’s entire road network couldbe threatened too.

And the National Gallery it’s far from being an isolated case of how our culture is being dumbed-down, devalued and sold off.

In Manchester, for example, funding has been cut to the People’s History Museum – the only museum in the country dedicated to the history of ordinary, working people.

Profit fodder?

On a more general basis, moving further and further toward a low-wage economy is neither good nor sustainable for the economy, as shown by recent figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, which revealed that, in spite of record levels of employment, tax revenues are down, and theneed for in-work benefits (including housing benefit) is up.

There may come a point when museums and galleries have to look at charging for entry – again.

But our history and our culture should not be seen as commodities, existing for the financial of the few, but unavailable to the many.

Plans to privatise huge numbers of jobs at the National Gallery are, at best, short sighted.

At their worst, its yet more evidence of an ideologically-based knowledge of the price of everything – and the value of nothing.

• 38 Degrees currently has two petitions running related to this topic:

No privatisation at the National Gallery

Restore funding to the People’s History Museum

Mona Lisa smile – please!

Have you ever wanted to take a photograph in a gallery – and found that you couldn’t?

While many museums and galleries do ban any photography, others don’t. Still others allow some – Tate Modern, for instance, will allow visitors to snap the permanent exhibits, but not the special exhibitions.

But the announcement that, in future, the National Gallery in London is to allow photography has inspired indignation from some visitors, and allowed the Telegraph to provoke a small measure of ire, as well as agreement, in an opinion piece on the decision.

In one sense, it’s quite amusing that publicising a quiet decision – made in part because it’s increasingly difficult for staff to know whether a visitor is using an electronic device to photograph an exhibit or look for information about it – might actually increase the likelihood of people now taking pictures in the gallery by raising awareness of it.

The issue, however, is not really about photographing exhibits, but in many ways, about what galleries are for and how we look at art and what we expect or want from art.

There’s nothing wrong per se with photography in a gallery. Allowing photography doesn’t suddenly mean that every painting is going to be obscured by people taking snaps of it – with or without the added ‘selfie’ element.

Some might ask why you’d photograph anything in a gallery.  

I do so on occasion – almost always for later reference. Many galleries don’t have general catalogues or postcards of every single work. And that’s particularly true of smaller galleries outside major cities.

Sometimes I might make notes – on my phone or even (say it quietly) in a little, old-fashioned notebook. With a pen.

But sometimes, when it’s less likely that you’ll be able to find a reproduction online, a might take a snap.

As an interesting contrast, in Paris, photography is banned in the Orangerie and the Orsay, but not in the Pompidou.

On a personal level, it was helpful in July, in the latter, to be able to take a few photos – and I didn’t get in the way of anybody else and nobody got in my way.

I don’t think it made any difference not to be able to in the Orsay, but in the Orangerie, where there’s a specific effort to create a peaceful, almost meditative space around Monet’s vast Nymphéas canvases, it would have been totally out of place.

There is an element of snobbery involved in at least some of the complaints. Nobody, I suspect, grouches about a visitor sitting quietly in a gallery and sketching a work.

That, of course, has a sort of discipline about it – it was one aspect of a traditional art education, so has a certain ‘legitimacy’.

The big problem in major galleries, though, is not photography, but overcrowding. And I mean when it’s 10 deep near a famous work.

Scrum at The Night Watch

Then, as I’ve said before, I do start feeling irritated by the ‘selfie with Rembrandt’ syndrome, as it occurred when we were visiting the Rijksmuseum last year and you had no chance of really seeing The Night Watch and a bloody struggle to get near any Vermeer.

I actually had to get rather rude myself and push through a crowd, pulling The Other Half behind, so that he could actually get to see The Milkmaid, which he loves.

Equally, when visiting the Courtauld in London last year, I was revelling in being alone in the gallery of gothic and medieval works, when the door opened and a group of tourists flooded in and I was pushed out of the way so that people could start snapping the exhibits.

I fled upstairs, only to be interrupted by them again as their guide nearly sprinted them around the place, barely allowing enough time to cast more than a cursory glance at anything – oh, apart from taking pictures of each other in front of Cranach the Elder’s Adam and Eve, making crass gestures at the picture.

This is not a question of expecting people to genuflect toward works of art, but of basic good manners and a little bit of respect for the others you’re sharing a gallery space with.

In the Courtauld, I eventually sat it out in the Cézanne room. There are worse things in life.

But it begged a question that why people visit galleries – particularly in those sort of groups – and what art is for.

Is art simply another commodity – an attraction to boost tourism, for instance? Or does it have a value beyond that? In our price-of-everything-value-of-nothing world, I suggest that there is clash between these two.

If, as Picasso said, “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life”, then that implies the need for some sort of contemplation. In the Orangerie, with those Monets, it could hardly be truer.

I get the sense that, with the likes of that Courtauld group – and others I’ve seen being dragged around cities on tours, led by bored individuals carrying a brolly or a plastic flower aloft to identify themselves – this is tick-box tourism and has nothing to do with really seeing or experiencing what they’re looking at.

At the heart of this, ultimately, is the gross over-commercialisation of our society, with its attitude of instant gratification and the dumbing down that goes with that.

These are problems that spread across all sorts of realms of life, not just art, but one small illustration of it is the use of ‘selfie’ to describe a self-portrait by someone like Rembrandt, effectively removing any appreciation of the skill involved or even what self-portraiture is really about.

Not that this should be any surprise. After all, concentration camps are on tourists trails these days, while visitors stand grinning as they’re photographed next to the statue of Anne Frank outside the Westerkerk in Amsterdam.

And all this works in combination with the technical/digital revolution, leading to a world in which people visit cultural icons – not to look at them and wonder at what made them such, but, in effect, to digitally play a version of I spy, before moving rapidly to the next one.

There is another problem with that. Let’s shrug our shoulders and say that, well, if someone wants to race around a gallery and merely glance at stuff, then that’s up to them and they are free to do so.

Which is entirely true, of course.

But at what point does the sort of behaviour and crowd chaos outlined above become unacceptable where it impinges on the experience of other visitors?

You can ask the same question another way: why should someone have the right to play their music so loudly that all their neighbours have no choice but to hear it too?

Those are the problems: not photographing the exhibits in galleries.