Josie Appleton: Distorted priorities are destroying local museums

Unless our cultural climate is challenged, no amount of money can save local museums and galleries

Leading British painters and sculptors, including Antony Gormley and David Hockney, have written to Chancellor Gordon Brown asking for more money to revive local museums and galleries. Local museums and galleries, they say, were vital to their development as artists, the places where they "first encountered some of the great works of art that have shaped [their] lives". Yet today these places are "in danger of being allowed to wither and die".

While these artists are right to draw attention to the problems in local museums and galleries, they are wrong about the solution. In my view, the main problem facing these valuable national institutions is not so much their lack of money as their distorted priorities.

Britain is unusual in having so much splendid art in its local museums and galleries. These collections are legacies of 19th century cultural projects and post-war investment by institutions such as the Arts Council. But at present these collections are not giving the pleasure and inspiration that they could. This is because their traditional functions of presenting and interpreting great works of art are undervalued in today's cultural policy circles.

Indeed, they are even sneered at as being exclusive and intimidating. Increasingly money in local museums projects is not directed towards building up and preserving collections; it is going instead towards new social and political aims, such as social inclusion projects and neighbourhood renewal. These new aims are pushed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which has set targets and puts substantial pressure upon cultural institutions to comply. But museums themselves are often complicit in, or even driving, these new agendas. It is this climate, not lack of money, that presents the obstacle for museums.

The report the artists call upon in their letter, Renaissance in the Regions, from a government advisory body, Resource, is a case in point. This report paints a gloomy picture of the state of regional museums and galleries. In local museums, buildings are decaying, opening hours have been reduced and curatorial staff have been cut. And often collections are not being built upon – in many museums, collecting has stopped and there are no funds for acquisitions. The report calls for £267.2m over the next few years to halt the decline.

But the interesting thing is the way that Resource's report justified this call: "Museums and galleries have an important part to play in education, learning, access, social inclusion, the regions, and the modernisation of public services." There is little sense here of the value of collections of art, or the inspiration that this art can provide.

Two weeks ago I spoke at a conference about interactivity in art museums at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where many representatives of local museums bemoaned their lack of funds. When I heard about some of the projects they were running, I became less sympathetic. There was Jo Digger from the New Art Gallery, Walsall, who talked about a project covering key modern sculptures in "very expensive" protective covering, so that visitors would be able to touch them. We were treated to a picture of one of these sculptures sitting on a stand saying "hot or cold?", with a very small child putting a cap on it. Interpretative aids at the exhibition included a jigsaw puzzle and "feely boxes". Then there was Fiona Godfrey, developer of Fantasmic Centre for Visual Arts in Cardiff, which had been forced to close through lack of funds. But not before they had spent a substantial sum on interactive exhibits such as a "morphing machine", where people could make an image of their own face and move things around (the value of this exhibit, Godfrey explained, was to help provide people with "a sense of themselves").

A report on social inclusion by the Group for Large Local Authority Museums shows just how much priorities have become distorted in many local museums. Tyne and Wear Museum's Statement of Purpose and Beliefs reads: "We act as an agent of social and economic regeneration." One of the projects listed was Tyne and Wear Museum's work with "Michael, a real tearaway [who] became involved in the production of a CD-ROM for the museum, and gained enormously in self-esteem".

A cynic might say that more money would only allow these museum representatives to do even more damage. What they need is to revalue the works of art they are in charge of, to realise what it means to be an art museum. Only this will enable them to take on the mighty task of inspiring a new generation of artists across Britain. Artists and sculptors are right to be concerned about the state of our museums. But unless the present cultural climate is challenged, no amount of money can save them.

Josie.Appleton@spiked-online.com

The writer is author of 'Museums for "The People"?' (The Institute of Ideas)