Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Further Reading
Cornforth, Chris. 2005. The Governance of Public and Non-profit Organisations: What Do Boards Do? Routledge Studies in the Management of Voluntary and Non-Profit Organisations. London: Routledge Psychology Press.
Falk, John. 2006. Thriving in the Knowledge Age: New Business Models for Museums and Other Cultural Institutions. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Lord, Barry, Gail Dexter Lord, and Lindsay Martin. 2012. Manual of Museum Planning: Sustainable Space, Facilities, and Operations. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Lord, Gail Dexter. 2007. “Museums Outside-In.” Conference Proceedings of the 21st ICOM General Conference, 90–97. Vienna: ICOM. Accessed September 20, 2014. http://icom.museum/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/ICOM_2007/2007_Proceedings_eng.pdf.
Macdonald, Sharon, ed. 2011. A Companion to Museum Studies. Oxford: Blackwell.
Oster, Sharon, and William Goetzmann. 2003. “Does Governance Matter? The Case of Art Museums.” In The Governance of Not-for-Profit Organizations, edited by Edward L. Glaeser, 71–99. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, National Bureau of Economic Research. Accessed September 20, 2014. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c9966.pdf.
Suchy, Sherene. 2004. Leading with Passion: Change Management in the 21st Century Museum. Lanham, MD: AltaMira.
Barry Lord is Co-President of Lord Cultural Resources, the world’s largest firm specialized in the planning and management of museums and other cultural institutions. With his wife and partner, Gail Dexter Lord, he is co-author of The Manual of Museum Management (2nd ed. 2009), co-editor of other volumes in their Manual series, and most recently author of Art & Energy: How Culture Changes (The AAM Press, 2014).
Rina Gerson (née Zigler) was a Research Consultant in the Management Consulting Group at Lord Cultural Resources between 2008 and 2011. Rina worked with MOCCA’s Board and Staff, guiding it through Strategic and Governance Planning initiatives and later became the founding Co-Chair of MOCCA’s young leadership committee, the Moccamigos. She holds a BA with Honours in Art History from McGill University and an MBA from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.
3
POLICIES, FRAMEWORKS, AND LEGISLATION
The Conditions Under Which English Museums Operate
Sara Selwood and Stuart Davies
The conditions within which English museums currently operate tend to be associated with the three successive New Labour governments of May 1997 to May 2010. New Labour issued unprecedented levels of policy guidance, introduced a “new cultural framework” and substantially increased funding to the cultural sector. In one of his valedictory speeches, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, referred to having achieved “a golden age” for the arts and museums (Tempest 2007). But, of course, museums’ modus operandi goes back considerably further and many interventions were not targeted at museums, but intended to reform the public sector more broadly. Their impact on museums was secondary and unintentional.
Policies change over the course of 13 years. Not only did New Labour improve many of the programs it inherited, but, over the course of the 2000s, retracted much of the cultural framework it had itself put in place. And, in the wake of the 2008 recession, its successor government, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Coalition, has rescinded even more. It abolished New Labour’s Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in what was known as its “bonfire of the quangos” (the abolition of a number of quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations) and withdrew funding from many museum-related initiatives. These included Strategic Commissioning, an education program which linked museums and schools, and Creative Partnerships, launched in 2002 to bring creative workers such as artists, architects, and scientists into schools to work alongside teachers to inspire young people’s learning.
The sustainability of policies and legislation depends on various factors – including economic stringencies; ideologies; and effectiveness. This chapter explores three of the most iconic manifestations of English museums’ regulatory frameworks introduced over the past 20 years: the National Lottery, launched in 1994; free admission to the national museums (from 1999); and Renaissance in the Regions (from 2001). It examines their original intentions, their development over the long term, and their perceived significance.
The chapter is presented in six sections. The first provides background to the nature of legislation and regulation governing museums in England; the second sets out the major reforms introduced by the Thatcher and Major governments up to 1997; the third describes New Labour’s policies and frameworks, including prescribed modes of delivery and accountability, as they applied to museums, 1997–2010; the fourth focuses on the current Coalition Government from 2010; the fifth traces the evolution of three particular initiatives, introduced by Conservative and Labour governments, as illustrated by case studies; and the last offers some observations drawn from the above.
The chapter explores the position of English museums from both macro- and micro-perspectives, by considering the wider picture, as well as that which is sector specific. While it is accepted that case studies have their limitations (not least that they may not be representative), they are nevertheless grounded in lived reality. Each case study presented here sets out its subject’s original intentions against a background of government policies; describes the nature of its administrative and delivery mechanisms; and considers changes introduced over time and its perceived effect. The chapter draws on a variety of sources. Primary sources include reports from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), other policy documents, and autobiographies. It also refers to secondary sources, including the academic literature, sectoral reports, and political biographies, and the first-hand experiences and observations of the authors, both of whom, in different ways, worked for government agencies during the New Labour years.
Intentional and unintentional legislation and regulation
Museums and galleries in the United Kingdom are relatively lightly legislated or regulated. A number of Acts of Parliament deal with individual museum’s issues, but these relate mostly to the governance or constitutional arrangements of the national museums. For example, it is under the terms of the Museums and Galleries Act 1992 that the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery maintain a collection of portraits in all media of the most eminent persons in British history from the earliest times to the present day. Other types of legislation affecting museums include amendments to existing legislation and the unintended consequences of legislation. This section considers all three types.
Recent examples of intentional legislation include the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009 which granted the trustees of named British national institutions the power to de-accession any artifacts or cultural objects currently held in their collections that were stolen by or on behalf of the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945, so that these could be returned to their lawful owners or heirs.
More often, legislation comprises amendments to existing legislation. The Regulatory Reform (Museum of London) (Location of Premises) Order 2004, for example, permitted the Museum of London to operate a museum anywhere within the confines of Greater London,
