tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/the-national-gallery-15533/articlesThe National Gallery – The Conversation2023-04-04T12:33:28Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2032392023-04-04T12:33:28Z2023-04-04T12:33:28ZMay budget to boost cultural and historical institutions with $535m four-year injection<p>Next month’s budget will provide $535.3 million extra over four years for nine major cultural and historical institutions. </p>
<p>The funding will go to the Australian National Maritime Museum, Bundanon Trust, Museum of Australian Democracy (Old Parliament House), National Archives of Australia, National Film and Sound Archive, National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, National Museum of Australia and the National Portrait Gallery of Australia.</p>
<p>The money includes the $33 million earlier announced for the National Library’s digital archive Trove.</p>
<p>The government also promises that beyond the four years, the institutions will get indexed funding. </p>
<p>“Our institutions will be able to meet their financial obligations and invest for the future knowing they finally have a government that values them just as the Australian people do,” a statement on the funding says. </p>
<p>The government says it will “establish clear line of sight over future capital works and improvements to ensure the institutions never again fall into the state of disrepair they did over the last decade”.</p>
<p>But it has not abolished the “efficiency dividend” requirement that has been a bane of the institutions over many years. </p>
<p>Finance Minister Katy Gallagher this week defended the efficiency dividend, telling The Canberra Times it was appropriate as long as the funding was adequate. </p>
<p>“Putting a productivity efficiency component into any funding I think is a responsible part of government and making sure we keep the budget on a sustainable footing,” she said.</p>
<p>The efficiency dividend dates from the 1980s and has been again criticised by the Community and Public Sector Union, which represents staff at the institutions. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the extra funding was another example of his government having to clean up the mess left by the Coalition. </p>
<p>Arts Minister Tony Burke said the former government had left the institutions in “a shocking state of disrepair” and the funding would get them “back to where they should be – where the government delivers strong core funding and philanthropists take them to the next level”.</p>
<p>The financial squeeze has led to some institutions having to reduce staff and services and neglect some activities and maintenance. </p>
<p>The government recently appointed former ABC journalist Barrie Cassidy as chair of the Old Parliament House board. </p>
<p>This is second time around for Cassidy, a one-time staffer to Bob Hawke. He was appointed chair of the Old Parliament House advisory council at the very end of the last Labor government but resigned after the Coalition won the 2013 election. Cassidy (who was still with the ABC at the time) was pressured to go by then arts minister George Brandis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203239/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government also promises that beyond the four years, the institutions will get indexed fundingMichelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1330922020-03-09T14:57:27Z2020-03-09T14:57:27ZMary Beard and the British Museum – who runs the UK’s cultural institutions?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319093/original/file-20200306-118890-606bca.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C5%2C3488%2C2061&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of Britain's great cultural institutions: the British Museum in London.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudio Divizia via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many of those within academic and cultural circles in the UK were shocked and angered recently when it was reported that the government <a href="https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/mary-beard-british-museum-1202679615/">had refused to allow</a> the nomination of one of the country’s leading public intellectuals to the board of trustees of the British Museum. Mary Beard was rejected, reportedly by order of the prime minister’s office, apparently because of her outspoken pro-European Union views. </p>
<p>To put this into context, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/01/british-museum-put-mary-beard-on-the-board-despite-downing-st-veto">No 10 is reported</a> to have rejected someone whose <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Beard_(classicist)">CV reads as follows</a>: Dame Commander of the British Empire, professor of classics at Cambridge University, Royal Academy of Arts professor of ancient literature and classics editor of The Times Literary Supplement. And this, apparently, because she takes an opposing view on one of the key issues of the day.</p>
<p>Former BBC World Service boss Sir John Tusa – himself a former trustee of the British Museum – condemned the decision, calling it an “<a href="https://www.varsity.co.uk/news/18883">absolute scandal</a>”. It has been reported that the British Museum <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8061773/British-Museum-defies-Downing-Street-veto-plans-make-pro-EU-scholar-Mary-Beard-trustee.html">will defy the government</a>and that Beard will still be appointed to one of five trustee positions that the museum controls itself (the government and the Queen control the other 20).</p>
<p>But the story of the government’s rejection of Beard’s candidacy is not just about escalating political polarisation within Britain but also a deterioration of the “arm’s-length principle” that has characterised the governance of cultural institutions in the UK for many years.</p>
<p>It’s a principle that is designed to protect institutions like the British Museum from politicisation. The argument is that it protects both parties, preventing important cultural institutions from becoming politicised and at the same time protecting the government from any backlash due to the inherent heterodoxy and freedom of expression within arts and culture. </p>
<p>The British Museum itself cites arm’s length as its governance principle, as you can see from this extract below: </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319072/original/file-20200306-118966-1hguwqy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How the British Museum is governed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In their much cited <a href="https://www.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/ArmsLengthArts_paper.pdf">1989 discussion of cultural funding practices</a>, Canadian academics Harry Hillman-Chartrand and Claire McCaughey noted that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>having been appointed by the government of the day, trustees are expected to fulfil their grant-giving duties independent of the day-to-day interests of the party in power, much like the trustee of a blind trust. </p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Guarantee of independence</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/24/contents">British Museum Act (1963)</a>, out of the British Museum’s 25 trustees, 20 are appointed by the Crown – one by the queen, 15 by the prime minister and four by the culture secretary. Refusing to nominate Beard – while distasteful on the part of the government – might not strictly be a violation of the arm’s-length principle, because the museum can still insist on having Beard as one of its five nominees. The real violation would be if the choice of the trustees was not allowed as a result of further government intervention.</p>
<p>Most public cultural institutions do not have the options available to the British Museum. The arms’s-length principle has been undermined within the realm of British cultural governance for some time. Of the four institutions covered by the <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1992/44/contents">1992 Museums and Galleries Act</a>, only the trustees of the Tate Gallery and the National Gallery are allowed one nomination – but it must be a trustee from the other institution’s board (so the National Gallery chooses a trustee from the Tate Gallery’s board and vice versa). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=383&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/319096/original/file-20200306-118960-pk7fk4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=482&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">National Portrait Gallery is allowed to nominate only one of its trustees.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">FenlioQ via Shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In comparable institutions covered by other acts, for example the V&A Museum, all trustees are appointed by the prime minister’s office. So the wholesale appointment of trustees to cultural institutions by the government is not unusual and there is no scope for the kind of action or show of independence that the British Museum trustees are planning to take. </p>
<p>Here lies the danger – the arm’s length maintained between the government’s political interests and those of trustees of cultural institutions has – in essence – become closer. It now appears to be more of a handshake.</p>
<h2>A limited model</h2>
<p>The arm’s-length principle is more commonly discussed in terms of funding and in relation to the UK’s various Arts Councils. The Arts Council of Great Britain – now the Arts Council of England (ACE) – which was created in 1946, was arguably the world’s first arm’s-length council.</p>
<p>Despite this model finding its way into governance in countries around the world, such as <a href="https://www.crcpress.com/Global-Cultural-Economy/Beukelaer-Spence/p/book/9781138670099">Australia and New Zealand</a>, the ACE model has been <a href="https://www.americansforthearts.org/by-program/reports-and-data/legislation-policy/naappd/distance-or-intimacy-the-arms-length-principle-the-british-government-and-the-arts-council-of-great">found wanting</a> for its inattention to <a href="https://www.cusp.ac.uk/themes/a/oakley-obrien-inequality-in-cultural-production/">issues of systemic exclusion</a> on race, class, gender and even location. One <a href="https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/sites/artsprofessional.co.uk/files/administrator/ace_in_a_hole_jan2020.pdf">criticism</a> of ACE’s recently released ten-year strategy, ACE in a Hole?, focused on the values it needs to espouse rather than any particular initiative.</p>
<p>The two most important, as far as I am concerned, are trust and accountability. The report’s authors highlight the lack of accountability and trust between ACE, the government and the various cultural communities. These criticisms echo one another – even as far back as 1997, academic <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/10286639709358066">Ruth Blandina-Quinn</a>, whose work has focused on arts policy, noted increasing politicisation of the Arts Council. This, she wrote, had been exacerbated by the lack of criteria for appointment, as well as political appointees, a lack of transparency, a lack of accountability to the artistic community and increasingly closer ties with, and oversight by, the government. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1234048980595748864"}"></div></p>
<p>While the public awaits the conclusion of the Mary Beard episode, it’s a good time to examine and debate whether arm’s length is still the principle within cultural governance. Criticisms about <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526144164/">systemic inequity</a> within the arts and cultural industries abound and have not been helped by the exclusion of one of the UK’s leading female public intellectuals. </p>
<p>It’s a slippery slope – Britain’s cultural institutions must be safeguarded from becoming political footballs where a person’s opinions alone are grounds for exclusion from governing bodies. The debate, as we wait to see whether Mary Beard is allowed to take up her place in the British Museum’s trustees, is what a country whose galleries and arts organisations are directly controlled by government placeholders will look like.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/133092/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kim-Marie Spence serves on the advisory board of the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton.</span></em></p>The government must respect the arm’s-length principle which ensures institutions like the British Museum are independent from government control.Kim-Marie Spence, Postdoctoral Researcher in Pop and Global Cultural Industries (and Adjunct Lecturer, University of the West Indies), Solent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/947572018-04-11T10:05:54Z2018-04-11T10:05:54ZMonet for nothing? The misguided controversy about gallery ticket prices<p>The exhibition <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/the-credit-suisse-exhibition-monet-architecture">Monet & Architecture</a> has opened at London’s National Gallery to <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/go/london/arts/monet-and-architecture-review-magnificent-show-finds-a-revolutionary-power-in-bricks-and-mortar-a3806431.html">critical acclaim</a>. But it has also caused controversy – over the price of admission. </p>
<p>For the first time in its history, the museum has raised ticket prices above £20 for a ticket bought on the spot, with amounts varying between £18 and £20 if booked in advance online. <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/the-credit-suisse-exhibition-monet-architecture?tab=1">According to the gallery</a>, the price varies depending on the day of visit and the method of booking, and can be as much as £22. </p>
<p>Major British newspapers and broadcasters, including the <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/made-of-monet-gallery-charges-record-22-a-ticket-fr5sp80rk">The Times</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/apr/06/national-gallerys-22-ticket-revives-debate-exhibition-prices">The Guardian</a> and the BBC picked up on this price hike. In doing so, they reignited the seemingly neverending debate over whether and how much a museum should charge visitors to see their exhibitions. </p>
<p>But the uproar about increasing ticket prices is misguided. First, it is a well-known fact that museums <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/e1b325ce-122f-11e8-940e-08320fc2a277">struggling with funding cuts</a> need to find alternative revenue streams. Staging blockbuster exhibitions with paid entry fees is one of the most successful ways for public institutions to supplement their public funding. </p>
<p>This show, the first Monet exhibition in the UK for more than 20 years, features a number of works which are highly relevant to London visitors, including many London city scenes previously unseen in the capital. And with Claude Monet making a regular appearance in the top ten of the most popular artists of all time, the exhibition will undoubtedly attract a huge number of visitors. </p>
<p>It would be a missed opportunity for the museum not to charge the equivalent of other popular attractions in the city – around the same cost of a West End cinema ticket (and you rarely hear cinemas criticised for not showing films for free). People are often prepared to pay for peak prices – whether it’s air travel or entertainment. The National Gallery knows its audience will pay that price – so why not charge them?</p>
<p>Also, <a href="https://www.artsprofessional.co.uk/news/museum-entry-fees-do-not-affect-visitor-diversity-research-suggests">according to research</a> commissioned by the Association of Independent Museums in 2016, and backed up by other studies, entrance fees do not deter visitors – nor do they increase or decrease visitor diversity. </p>
<p>If we take that into account, it is much more crucial to ask a different question which is astonishingly overlooked in the debate. What is the National Gallery doing to engage visitors who might not think of attending one of their shows? </p>
<p>On this subject, sadly, the picture seems rather more bleak. On the National Gallery’s website, scheduled events relating to the exhibition are also rather pricey. A guided walk of “Monet’s London” comes in at £32. </p>
<h2>Artistic license</h2>
<p>Of around ten events connected to the exhibition, none seems to creatively engage with anyone other than the gallery’s core audience of tourists and the middle class. All “family” events – the only other specific audience group the museum seems to attempt to engage with – relate to the permanent collection. </p>
<p>Returning to finances, there are barely any financial incentives notable in regard to discounts. The National Gallery’s <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/the-credit-suisse-exhibition-monet-architecture?tab=1">website</a> does not list any discounts for students, school pupils, the unemployed or the over 65s. Only children under 12 are free with a paying adult. So a family of four with teenagers would spend £88 visiting the exhibition at the weekend.</p>
<p>While it is not surprising that a national museum must charge in order to fund its yearly blockbuster shows, and while we can acknowledge that the museum calculates the ticket prices taking into account a wide number of factors “such as the costs involved in mounting that particular show”, important questions remain unresolved. </p>
<p>And the biggest question of all is: does the gallery actively welcome anyone other than the affluent middle classes and tourists? Looking at the National Gallery’s programming, pricing and lack of outreach, it would seem that the notion of inclusivity does not feature prominently within the art covered walls of its proud building on Trafalgar Square.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephanie Dieckvoss does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Charging over £20 for admission is one thing – but what about reaching beyond the usual audience?Stephanie Dieckvoss, Senior Lecturer, Kingston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/461102015-08-14T12:52:20Z2015-08-14T12:52:20ZComparison of National Gallery to Disneyland touches a nerve<p>Staff at the National Gallery are on indefinite strike in a dispute about the privatisation of much of its visitor services and security provision.</p>
<p>This follows <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-33858543">56 days</a> of strikes by members of the PCS union at the gallery since February. During some of the busiest months of the tourist season, many of the most famous exhibits at the gallery have been – and are still – inaccessible. </p>
<p>More than 50,000 supporters have signed up to the “<a href="https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/no-privatisation-at-national-gallery">No Privatisation at National Gallery</a>” campaign, and the strike is the subject of ongoing debate on social media. Not surprisingly, given his opposition to privatisation and his <a href="http://www.thestateofthearts.co.uk/2015/08/11/the-arts-are-for-everybody-not-the-few-there-is-creativity-in-all-of-us/">recent statement</a> of support for the arts, Jeremy Corbyn has declared himself in solidarity with the workers. This has become a very visible dispute, further fuelled by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/jul/23/museums-should-charge-entrance-fees">calls</a> to reintroduce admissions charges.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"608958753954758656"}"></div></p>
<p>One striker explained the industrial action in part by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/11/national-gallery-staff-strike-exhibitions-privatisation">predicting</a> the gallery’s transformation into a theme park. That comparison was reported in The Guardian:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I can feel what’s coming. It’s in the air. They will turn the National Gallery into a big Disneyland of sorts. We definitely don’t want that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The privatisation of services is part of the National Gallery’s “ongoing modernisation programme” aimed at making it, among other things, more appealing to a “broader (and younger) audience”. Sounds good, but there is some subtext here that is difficult to unpack. The gallery gives away little in its <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/strike-action-statement">statement</a> about the strikes. </p>
<p>It would seem that such privatisations (and the National Gallery are not on their own here) are part of a move to redefine the “experiences” that “customers” have in their interactions with the “business” of heritage. Museums and galleries are of course not immune to the commodification of our media and culture more broadly. The fact that at every museum conference I have been to this year someone has mentioned Disneyland’s <a href="http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/">MagicBand</a> (a bracelet worn by visitors that stores their data, logs transactions and notes preferences with a view to providing a frictionless “consumer” experience) with a mix of awe and fear should perhaps tell us something about the direction of travel. </p>
<p>There are a number of terms that I hear repeatedly in the work I do with and alongside museums. Excellence. Resilience. Flexibility. Sustainability. The situation looks bleak, and is demanding creative and agile responses. Arts Council England’s museum <a href="http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/apply-funding/funding-programmes/museum-resilience-fund-2015-18/">resilience fund</a> – which runs until 2018 – is a case in point. </p>
<p>Let’s be clear, the museums sector is already constituted of different funding and business models; some already generate their own income, some receive subsidy from the state, for many it is a mix. Some are national, some regional, some local. Many are completely run by volunteers, quietly making it work against all of the odds. The sector’s diversity might be considered one of its strengths.</p>
<p>Those museums which receive public funding are acutely aware that they must continue to make the case for their survival, and to re-articulate their value in line with current political and societal priorities. As such there have been moves to highlight the important role museums play in terms of education, social justice, well-being and happiness; the <a href="http://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-change-lives">Museums Change Lives</a> campaign for example. Evidence shows that at their best museums make people more curious, more connected and more happy.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the debate about museums as businesses seems not to be going away and is in danger of trumping defences of museums and galleries as public institutions. And then there’s the resurfacing of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2015/jul/23/museums-should-charge-entrance-fees">calls for the re-introduction of admission charges</a>. I am utterly perplexed by the persistence of this position. By all means have a debate about how museums can <a href="https://theconversation.com/museums-are-becoming-more-playful-in-how-they-ask-us-for-money-45186">fund-raise more effectively</a> – and they will need to, as the next tranche of cuts are announced – but let’s not return to a scenario where people feel disenfranchised and distanced from the collections they so often own.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91817/original/image-20150813-21413-1pmewv3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=567&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Are these visitors or consumers?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Museums and galleries are not stuck in the past. The museum staff that I have worked with strive to remain innovative and relevant, to do ethical and interesting projects with visitors of all kinds. They feel privileged to work with their collections, often alongside enthusiastic and knowledgeable volunteers. Cutting back their independence may only serve to hinder “modernisation”.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=811&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/91899/original/image-20150814-2582-uef9nr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1019&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Statue of Sekhemka, sold by Northampton council.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bibilovski/Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The cultural sector is bracing itself for <a href="http://artsindustry.co.uk/latest-news/dcms-told-to-plan-for-40-cuts/1170">further cuts</a>. Free gallery admission is <a href="http://www.museumsassociation.org/comment/policy-blog/29072015-alistair-brown-charging-museums-free-entry">under threat</a>. Museums around the UK have been scaling back their activities and making redundancies. Some are even considering the sale of valuable “assets” from their collections (and in the case of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-33607855">Northampton Borough Council</a> the deed is done). </p>
<p>There can be “resilience” only up to a point. We have a moral and ethical obligation to ensure our museums remain viable and to protect them from becoming indistinguishable from other businesses. Disneyland is great for a day or two, but museums nurture relationships that last lifetimes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Kidd receives funding from the AHRC and the ESRC.</span></em></p>The debate about museums as businesses is in danger of trumping defences of museums and galleries as public institutions.Jenny Kidd, Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/441202015-07-08T16:28:05Z2015-07-08T16:28:05ZHear this: it’s no longer enough to just look at paintings<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/87796/original/image-20150708-31595-nuecw1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What does Cézanne's Bathers sound like? </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_C%C3%A9zanne_-_Bathers_(Les_Grandes_Baigneuses)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Art lovers now have the chance to listen to (yes, listen to) some well known paintings at the National Gallery. Six composers and sound artists have been asked to create music or sound installations inspired by paintings of their choice from the gallery’s collection, for its new exhibition, <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/soundscapes">Soundscapes</a>. Their work will be heard only in the presence of the art that inspired it. We will, we are told, “hear the painting” and “see the sound”.</p>
<p>This is not the first time the National Gallery has combined its paintings with other art forms – you can see some excellent examples on their Inspired by the Collection <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/learning/inspired-by-the-collection/">website</a>. What is new, though, is the admission of sound directly into the hallowed – and normally hushed – presence of the paintings themselves. </p>
<p>In a culture dominated by the looked-at (and especially the looked-at-on-a-tiny-screen) this represents something of a coup for the often neglected art of the heard. But if you think the idea of combining sight and sound in art is a novel one, think again: multimedia art forms hark back as far as ancient Greece. </p>
<h2>Ancient Greek multimedia</h2>
<p>While the fusing of sound and image might seem like a product of our multimedia age, it actually has a long history. In 1598, composer Jacopo Peri and librettist Ottavio Rinuccini invented a completely new art form, inspired by a fusion of the arts in ancient Greek theatre. They combined existing musical and theatrical practice to create <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacopo-Peri#ref274949">Dafne</a>; a performance widely recognised as the first true opera. </p>
<p>Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky’s <a href="http://www.britannica.com/topic/Pictures-at-an-Exhibition">Pictures at an Exhibition</a> was famously inspired by a retrospective of paintings by his friend Viktor Hartman, exhibited shortly after his untimely death in 1873. Meanwhile, Mussorgsky’s contemporary, Wagner, was obsessed with unifying all the art forms in his operas. Wagner was inspired – like Peri before him – by the ancient Greek multimedia <a href="http://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_aeschylus.html">tragedies of Aeschylus</a>. Next, Scriabin went even further, including a part in his orchestral work Prometheus (1910) for a “colour organ”. Rather than producing sound, Scriabin’s organ projected pools of coloured light onto a screen.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/V3B7uQ5K0IU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A 2010 performance of Prometheus.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Lumière brothers almost unthinkingly invented film music when their first public cinema screening in 1895 was accompanied by a guitarist. By the mid 1920s, the possibility of synchronising sound recording with moving images was transforming cinema music from improvised accompaniment to an integral part of the craft of film. </p>
<p>Today, the continuing development of technology has transformed this undreamed of possibility of inter-art fusion into the norm. Most of our music is experienced with visuals thrown in, from film and TV music, to pop and rock videos, to computer games. But in this fusion of art forms, is it inevitable that sound, like the Lumière’s guitarist, will be reduced to mere background?</p>
<h2>Nothing to see</h2>
<p>While technology enabled artists to fuse image and music, it also made possible for the first time an art of pure sound, in which there is deliberately nothing to see – not even musicians. <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/pierre-schaeffer-mn0000679092/biography">Pierre Schaeffer</a>, an engineer at French Radio during the Nazi occupation, saw the potential of sound recording to create a wholly new art form. </p>
<p>Schaeffer pioneered a form where recorded sounds could be heard, not just as effects in radio plays, but as artistic objects in their own right. He coined the term “<a href="http://www.soundmattersblog.com/musiqueconcrete1/">musique concrète</a>”, and created its first example – Etude aux chemins de fer – in 1948.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N9pOq8u6-bA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Etude aux chemins de fer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rather than embracing an inter-arts approach, musique concrète went out its way to distance itself from the visual, and even from the real world altogether. Schaeffer used sound recording and loudspeakers, not just to create an art form where there is nothing to see, but to dispense with the meaning of sounds altogether. In listening to sounds without thinking about what has made them, he hoped to reveal sonic details that sight and meaning usually drown out. What’s that we hear; is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s … a sound. Pure and simple. Beautiful, subtle, scintillating sound, intended simply for the joy of sound itself. Almost like, well – music.</p>
<h2>Opportunity and challenge</h2>
<p>The National Gallery has carefully chosen forms of sound making that have very different natural habitats, and different relationships with the visual; concert hall, cinema, club, gallery, nature. There are contributions from a range of artists, from Oscar-winning soundtrack composer Gabriel Yared to DJ and producer Jamie xx. Soundscapes represents a kind of inventory of the many ways in which we encounter artistic sound in the digital age. </p>
<p>This is an exhibition which promises to widen the audience for both painting and sound art, and to give us a new experience of both. It may even encourage musicians to look more, and art lovers to do more listening. But perhaps it also speaks to a growing reluctance, in today’s everything everywhere culture, to do either. It could be that we gradually losing the ability – or perhaps just the patience – to listen to music for its own sake, without needing something to keep our eyes busy too. Or, for that matter, to look at a painting. That’s all. Just look.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/44120/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Andrew Lewis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Sound art is nothing new. But do we really need it to appreciate the classics?Andrew Lewis, Professor of Music, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/425052015-06-03T05:18:05Z2015-06-03T05:18:05ZThe National Gallery is erasing women from the history of art<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83673/original/image-20150602-13962-pyl81o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mary Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair, 1878, National Gallery of Art.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Under the title <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/inventing-impressionism">Inventing Impressionism: The Man Who Sold a Thousand Monets</a>, the National Gallery in London recently mounted an exhibition about Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). It’s just finished, but don’t worry if you didn’t see it, I’m about to tell you why you shouldn’t have. This is how it was presented on the <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/content/conWebDoc/3560">website</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This spring, the National Gallery presents the UK’s first major exhibition devoted to the man who invented Impressionism, Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). An entrepreneurial art dealer, Durand-Ruel discovered and unwaveringly supported the Impressionist painters and is now considered a founding father of the international art market as we know it today.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I would like to be somewhat picky. One man invented Impressionism? Can this be right? In what sense did a dealer invent Impressionism? </p>
<p>Clearly the artists were the origin of the paintings. The first show was in 1874; it was an artist-led independent initiative that then was folded into the emerging dealer critic system. The artists had already formed a joint stock company to gain direct access to a potential public.</p>
<p>The knowledge of artistic practices, their conditions, and their potential recipients depends on a far more complex interface between economic theory, social systems and cultural production than this facile description allows. And in particular, the role of women at this time as both artists, collectors and those engaged in speculative creation and its conditions of dissemination cannot be erased from history without distorting our knowledge.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83675/original/image-20150602-19235-1xzws7v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Claude Monet, Impression: Sunrise, 1872, Musée Marmottan Monet.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Let me go one stage further. The group of artists who were labelled “Impressionists” first appeared before the public as a “Group of Independent Artists”. As a result of one of the paintings by Monet in the first exhibition in 1874 bearing the title <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression,_Sunrise#/media/File:Claude_Monet,_Impression,_soleil_levant.jpg">Impression: Sunrise</a> (impression being an academic term for an artist’s preliminary study when preparing a landscape painting), an irate critic named the whole lot mere “Impressionists”, indicating his disdain for their somewhat unfinished studies that should not, in his opinion, be exhibited as “works”. But the works in the original show and the five that followed until 1886 were labelled: “The New Painting” by their supporters. Did Durand-Ruel invent the brand? No. Did he invent the brand-name? No.</p>
<h2>‘Founding father’</h2>
<p>What he did do was to create a market for works of this new kind of painting by artists who had themselves already dared to set up shop independently of the government-run and official annual exhibition, the Salon, with its thousands of exhibits and rather conservative gatekeepers. They had to find another way to any public, and had to build another public if they were to survive. They wanted to get before a new public directly.</p>
<p>It was tricky. And so the emergence of a new system <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Canvases_and_Careers.html?id=2D_ehhO_14QC&redir_esc=y">named by Harrison and Cynthia White</a> “the dealer-critic” system, of which Paul Durand-Ruel was certainly a leading figure, represents a major change in the organisation of artistic production in France at a time when, having deposed an authoritarian Emperor, the economy was being liberalised and capitalised.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=736&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83676/original/image-20150602-19232-tym15g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=925&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Renoir, Portrait of Paul Durand-Ruel, 1910.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the free market system, the artists produce works on spec. The dealer takes the risk by supporting the artist to make the work with a salary, but the dealer also takes the works to sell, taking a percentage if he or she does. To sell, the dealer has to cultivate buyers and create collections of specific artists’ work over time. He plans annual shows to showcase the new work each year. To sustain this new venture capitalist form, dealers may commission critics to write about exhibitions and to write intriguing biographies of the artists, to gossip about what is new, if possible setting up a journal to do so. Durand Ruel was canny enough to understand all of this, although not always to stay entirely afloat in what was a very uncertain situation of a completely new kind of market and marketing.</p>
<p>But I’ve a third query: “founding father of the international art market”. Durand-Ruel in Paris was not alone in the development of this market. Monet jumped ship for Georges Petit in the early 1880s. Goupil was already there and Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s dealer brother, would push that company towards the new contemporaries during the 1880s. Ambroise Vollard would soon enter the scene in 1890s, Cassirer, Berthe Weill, Wilhelm Udhe – and later Peggy Guggenheim, Betty Parsons and Leo Castelli would also all be players in the history of modern art.</p>
<p>So why speak the language of the “father of the international art market” when it is absolutely not true? The answer is simple. Because it is part and parcel of a specific way of telling the story of art. The “great individual” model of art history involves one person who invents a movement and is a founding father. This blinds us to the entanglement of many factors and many actors in the making of the new.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83677/original/image-20150602-19249-l6nfd1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berthe Morisot, Grain Field, c. 1875, Musée d'Orsay.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Painting history</h2>
<p>Why am I bothering to take this simple website information page apart? It is, to me at least, perplexing that a major institution should still be peddling this way of learning about important events in art and art history to a sophisticated London – and international – audience made up of people from many walks of life who have found their way to the National Gallery and who are surely capable of understanding marketing on the one hand, and creative speculation on the other.</p>
<p>Why does this enrage me? Because this kind of story was challenged half a century ago. Then, we were not afraid of talking seriously about economics of art production, the relations between money and art, art and society, art and social change, art and modern experience, even art and gender. It was all already there in the history itself. All of this richness is reduced by the National Gallery to a show that starts with a photograph of one man, Paul Durand-Ruel, and then hangs the paintings he bought and sold in chronological groupings. Visiting the exhibition we learn nothing that we might not have learned from any show collecting some “Impressionists” together.</p>
<p>By telling us nothing new, the show actually misrepresents the past. It erases knowledge and deprives the visitors of ways of experiencing the art of 19th century Paris that are grounded in the actual history of that moment of early capitalist modernity that is still relevant to us today.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=753&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83678/original/image-20150602-19240-15fzb0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=946&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mary Cassatt, Mother and Child, 1905, National Gallery of Art.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On the website, they also tell us:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Between 1891 and 1922, Paul Durand-Ruel purchased around 12,000 pictures, including more than 1,000 Monets, 1,500 Renoirs, more than 400 by Degas, 800 Pissarros, 200 Manets and 400 Mary Cassatts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Renoir was clearly Durand-Ruel’s favourite. Yet the show sells on the man who sold 1,000 Monets. </p>
<p>And Durand-Ruel bought as many works by Mary Cassatt as Edgar Degas. But in the exhibition, there is only one painting by Mary Cassatt: The Child’s Bath (1893, art Institute of Chicago). There are two paintings by Berthe Morisot. Out of the 400 by Cassatt bought by Durand Ruel, they manage to show one and only in the section on Durand-Ruel when he goes to New York: thus erasing the remarkable fact that the American Mary Cassatt was embraced by this French coterie of new painters from the mid-1870s.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=916&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83674/original/image-20150602-19262-14ggvon.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1151&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Mary Cassatt, The Child’s Bath, 1893, Chicago Institute of Art.</span>
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</figure>
<h2>Erasing women</h2>
<p>This virtual absenting of the work of Mary Cassatt flies in the face of a key fact about the Impressionist exhibiting group: that it was the first affirmatively and consistently egalitarian art movement. In keeping with their progressive modern approach to art and society, women were involved alongside men in the organisation, promotion and exhibitions of the Independent exhibiting society from the start in 1874. Mary Cassatt was invited in 1875. </p>
<p>In the exhibition catalogues for the first few Independent Exhibitions, you’ll find Marie Bracquemond, Eva Gonzales, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt there in black and white. This is the primary evidence. It cannot be contradicted. But it has been consistently ignored by 20th-century art historians and 21st-century museum curators to the point at which what has been offered as knowledge to the visitors to this exhibition in 2015 actively erases this significant fact.</p>
<p>Does this matter? Yes. It has real effects. For example. if there are no works by Mary Cassatt in our major art galleries or featured in these historical exhibitions that represent the Impressionist moment to which thousands flock, no visitor will seek out a book on the artist from the bookshop. No publisher will commission a book on Cassatt, or keep those that exist in print. No books extend the imposed ignorance. No visitor will ask about the artist, and so on. </p>
<p>This is called “disappearing”. Through exhibitions then, the erasure is repeated. What we are allowed to know in art history is thus gendered: favouring “men who invent” and “fathers of invention” when the special fact about this particular event was actually the participation of women side by side with progressive men.</p>
<h2>Utter failure</h2>
<p>Let me take this one step further.</p>
<p>In terms of producing knowledge of either the work of Impressionist painters or the development of the art market, the exhibition was also a failure. It simply presented the major paintings in which Durand-Ruel dealt, without any detailed history of the emergent liberal economic policy of the time, or the cultural-business strategy of this innovative dealer, or of their artists’ participation in such a new climate, or of the relations between exhibiting, writing, journalism or collecting that sustained it.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/83680/original/image-20150602-19252-1g1gq1x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mary Cassatt, Self-portrait, 1878, Metropolitan Museum of Art.</span>
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<p>Durand-Ruel’s courage was considerable and his risky venture suffered during severe economic recessions in the early 1880s. Durand-Ruel’s specific strategy for selling to American tourists in Paris led to a plan to open a gallery in New York. It was this venture that ultimately saved his business. The key supporter in this scheme – who provided introductions to major collectors in the US and whose paintings, already in collections in the US, were lent to initiate the first exhibition – was none other than Mary Cassatt, who also provided some financial support to the failing dealer.</p>
<p>Since settling in Paris in 1874 and meeting the Independents, with whom she regularly exhibited, she had fostered interest and investment in her struggling companions, notably encouraging purchases by an American, Louisine Havemeyer, whose superb collection created under Mary Cassatt’s astute guidance formed the bequest that is now the core of the Metropolitan Museum’s brilliant holdings of later 19th-century French painting including their major Manets, Courbets and Degas.</p>
<p>I have to confess to more than academic interest. My first article as an art historian in 1974 was about the holdings of works by women in the National Gallery. They were precious few and they were all in the basement. Not much has been done to rectify their absence since that time. I am also the author of two books on Mary Cassatt, one written in 1978 and reprinted in 2010 and another written in 1998 for the Thames and Hudson World of Art. Will the latter stay in print if it never finds its readers through their exposure to Cassatt and her remarkable body of work over a 30-year career?</p>
<p>After seeing this exhibition, I felt as if I wanted to do a performance outside the National Gallery. Standing with a pile of my books and others on the women who also invented Impressionism side by side with their male colleagues, I wanted to hold a banner declaring that this institution wilfully and persistently distorts knowledge of art’s histories. </p>
<p>Instead, I wrote this article.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42505/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Griselda Pollock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The gallery’s latest blockbuster actively blinkers knowledge of the past.Griselda Pollock, Professor of the Social & Critical Histories of Art, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/390742015-03-19T14:05:57Z2015-03-19T14:05:57ZWhat’s on the agenda for the new director of the National Gallery?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/75358/original/image-20150319-1597-7ub914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A daunting task awaits.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-128078708/stock-photo-national-portrait-gallery-and-trafalgar-square.html?src=pp-same_artist-128078705-4cFk9iW1t8LSRvmNf7CRuw-2&ws=1">Cedric Weber/from www.shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For the past few months, the much-anticipated appointment of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31929716">Gabriele Finaldi</a> as the next director of the National Gallery has been one of the worst kept secrets in the art world. When the announcement was finally made on March 18, the question was less “Gabriele who?” and more “what took you so long?”</p>
<p>Finaldi’s appointment has been universally <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/gabriele-finaldi-national-gallerys-restoration-begins-with-new-director-10117804.html">welcomed</a>, not least because he is returning to the institution where he was Curator of Italian and Spanish Paintings from 1992 to 2002. By all accounts, he made many more friends than foes during his previous time at the gallery. </p>
<p>Since then, Finaldi has amply demonstrated his directorial ability Madrid’s Prado Museum, where he has been Deputy Director for Collections and Research since 2002. This is a role that involves much more than writing erudite essays on Baroque painting (his field of art history) and shuffling the picture hang. Finaldi oversaw the redisplay of the entire collection, the opening of a major extension and the creation of the Prado Research Centre. So what does such an impressive track record augur for his tenure in Trafalgar Square?</p>
<h2>A host of problems</h2>
<p>The contents of the intray on Finaldi’s desk will, of course, be daunting. Ever since the post of National Gallery Director was created in 1855 (some 30 years after the gallery was founded), it has been demonstrably impossible to please everyone, all of the time. Controversies ranging from picture cleaning (<a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/archive/record/NGA3/2/2">too aggressive</a>) to acquisitions (<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/we-bought-forgeries-says-national-gallery-1946468.html">the wrong ones</a>), exhibitions (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/leonardo-da-vinci/9049243/Leonardo-da-Vinci-exhibition-the-queue-is-an-art-in-itself.html">too many</a> visitors … or <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/11220353/Peder-Balke-National-Gallery-review.html">too few</a>), architecture (a “<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2004/may/17/architecture.regeneration">carbuncle</a>”) and the provision of the public lavatories (<a href="http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409418610">never enough</a>) have dogged successive directors with predictable regularity. Finaldi can add contemporary arguments about <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31829535">selfie sticks</a>, <a href="http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/corporatenews/storyoftheday/entryid/1695/protests-over-shell-sponsorship-of-national-gallery.aspx">oil sponsorship</a> and <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/support-us/corporate-entertaining/">corporate hires</a> to the list.</p>
<p>Top of the current directorial agenda is the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31521849">dispute</a> with the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union over the privatisation of visitor services at. Last year, the trustees announced the appointment of a private security contractor to take over the gallery, starting with the Sainsbury Wing. After years of rocky industrial relations, the PCS viewed the move as a gauntlet thrown down. It also provided the union with a PR gift. Why privatise those endlessly patient, dignified and knowledgeable guardians of the nation’s art? Since then, a series of strikes has resulted in the temporary closure of many rooms and a growing perception of an organisation ill at ease with itself.</p>
<p>If the dispute is resolved by August, when Finaldi takes over, the impending appointment of a new chair of the trustees will have helped. The privatisation policy is strongly supported by the current chair, Mark Getty, but his successor, <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/about-us/press-and-media/press-releases/hannah-rothschild-appointed-chair-of-the-national-gallery-board-of-trustees">Hannah Rothschild</a>, may want to change the mood music. The first female chair of trustees, Rothschild’s style is notably more inclusive and relaxed. Her use of social media (<a href="https://twitter.com/jazzybaroness">@jazzybaroness</a>) to welcome the “<a href="https://twitter.com/jazzybaroness/status/578104218956894208">fantastic news</a>” of Finaldi’s appointment also bodes well for the substantive relationship between the incoming duo. </p>
<h2>Putting on a good spread</h2>
<p>But Finaldi’s reputation as director will not primarily depend on the resolution of strikes or the easing of internal tensions among a staff with a reputation for fractious competitiveness. His critics will evaluate his success in artistic terms; judging if he can close the deal on acquisitions that both extend the art historical canon and hold their own alongside the greatest purchases of his predecessors. That’s no easy task in the present market for Old Master paintings, but Finaldi has encouraging form in both London and Madrid.</p>
<p>Today, even more than acquisitions, exhibitions are the most immediate and sensitive barometer of directorial success. Under the current director, Nick Penny, shows have veered between popular scrummages (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/nov/07/leonardo-da-vinci-national-gallery">Leonardo</a> and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/12/rembrandt-national-gallery-late-works-london">Rembrandt</a>) and crowd-dispelling scholarship (a forthcoming series of displays of <a href="http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/whats-on/calendar/sansovino-frames">empty frames</a>). Arguably, that’s not a bad balance, but Finaldi should insist on much more sophisticated design and staging to accommodate everyone who wants to see the most popular exhibitions.</p>
<p>Thomas Hoving, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, famously <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/art-obituaries/6790157/Tom-Hoving.html">described the role of the gallery director</a> as “part gunslinger, legal fixer, accomplice smuggler, anarchist and toady”. It’s unlikely that Finaldi views his new job in those terms. Even so, he’ll need to be politically astute, media-friendly, financially savvy, tirelessly charming … and a respected connoisseur. Good luck Gabriele.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/39074/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Rees Leahy received a AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award with the National Gallery, London (2014-17).
</span></em></p>With past controversies ranging from restoration to public toilets and present ones from oil sponsorship to selfie sticks, Gabriele Finaldi has a daunting task on his hands.Helen Rees Leahy, Professor of Museology, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.