Budget boost for UK museums
PLUS: V&A Dundee to overhaul galleries
— In partnership with Arts & Culture podcast
This edition features: Bankrupt Birmingham confirms arts funding axe | Queen Victoria bust defaced | Denmark’s women statue pledge
Happy Friday, and happy International Women’s Day.
Museums and galleries are marking the day in a variety of creative ways on social media as usual — although I thought the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich have done a really nice job with the simplicity of their Instagram Reel today.
But it’s not all in ‘cyberspace’ (yes I am old) — a number of eye-catching IRL celebrations have also launched to coincide with #IWD2024. These include a group show of artists including Nan Goldin and the Guerrilla Girls on protest photography and its intersection with feminism and activism that’s just opened at the South London Gallery, and the unveiling of an innovative tapestry triptych at the V&A dedicated to the ‘Edinburgh Seven’ who were the first women to matriculate at any British university. The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens is going even bigger: a whole new series of shows opening tomorrow as part of their year-long What If Women Ruled the World? exhibition takeover.
Before we get onto this week’s news, a quick hello to you if you are one of the 57 new subscribers from the past seven days, and a THANK YOU too because it meant you helped me cross 3,500 subscribers in total. Which has made me very happy.
Now let’s get into the week’s stories!
— maxwell
p.s. please support this newsletter’s sponsors and advertisers as they support me to bring you this newsletter.
— In partnership with Arts & Culture podcast
Navigating local funding cuts
This week Birmingham City Council approved the biggest budget cuts in local authority history. And money for arts and culture is being axed.
Other councils across the UK are doing the same. It's a bleak landscape for arts organisations.
Can it be navigated? Well a timely new episode of the Arts & Culture podcast offers some hope.
If you're not familiar, Arts & Culture is by the Association for Cultural Enterprises. Each edition sees host Tom Dawson speak to professionals at museums, galleries and heritage sites to discover and share innovation, excellence and best practice.
This latest instalment sees experts including Zak Mensah, Co-CEO of Birmingham Museums Trust, explain their experience of the current crisis, and how they're trying to steer a course through.
It's a must-listen.
Hear it here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Need To Know
Budget boost for museums
The museum sector in the UK has welcomed this week’s Budget from Chancellor Jeremy Hunt. His decision to make a scheme offering tax relief on exhibitions permanent has been widely praised.
The Museums & Galleries Exhibition Tax Relief scheme provides 45% tax relief for touring shows and 40% relief for non-touring shows. Since its inception in 2017, it has supported 6,430 exhibitions of all sizes across Britain.
Maria Balshaw, chair of the National Museum Directors’ Council and director of Tate thanked the Chancellor and the Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer for the move, and it “underpins the economic and social benefit museums and galleries make to the UK economy.” Art Fund director Jenny Waldman described the relief as "critical support.”
The Budget also saw three museums receive a share of ‘levelling up’ cash. The National Railway Museum will get £15m towards its £96m transformation of its York site, while National Museums Liverpool will get £10m towards the Waterfront project overhauling the International Slavery Museum. (Read more)
V&A Dundee to overhaul galleries
The third museum to get a cash injection as part of the Budget is V&A Dundee. They have been awarded £2.6m which the museum will use to “reimagine and expand” the permanent galleries dedicated to the design history of Scotland.
A spokesperson from the museum confirmed to this newsletter that the money from the UK government would cover the entire cost of the project. Work will now begin on scoping out next steps for the galleries, which are still only a little over five years old.
Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, said he had “promised the museum…that the UK Government would look to support the city and the museum wherever possible” after a visit to the Tartan exhibition in 2023, and that he was delighted “the Chancellor has now agreed that the V&A in Dundee is a nationally significant UK cultural project to which we should offer more financial support.”
Director Leonie Bell said the revamp would “further [enhance] the visitor experience.” (Read more)
Official: bust Brum axes art funding
Birmingham City Council has officially signed off on eye-watering spending reductions which will see all cultural spending axed. The £300m total savings are thought to be the largest local authority cuts in history.
The just-approved budget confirms that the city’s contemporary art gallery IKON will see all its council funding removed by 2026. CEO Ian Hyde said they were “determined to stay open and free.”
Yet questions remain over the funding of Birmingham Museums Trust which runs the city’s museum services. Its current contract with the Council runs until 31 March 2026 and so no funding cuts are expected before then. But a Council spokesperson told the Museums Journal this week that the current financial situation “does not allow any capacity for additional funding to be awarded – for example towards refurbishment costs of the reopening of the flagship Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.”
He added that the Council is working closely with Birmingham Museums Trust and partners to “identify where these funds can be sourced”. It’s hard not to interpret this as confirming a new gap in the budget which surely puts this summer’s planned reopening in doubt. (Read more)
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News from the UK
Scotland’s visitor bounceback | Scotland’s visitor attractions have officially returned to pre-Covid footfall levels, as visits were 17% up in 2023 on the previous year. The National Museum of Scotland is the top attraction, which saw an 11% rise to 2,186,841 visitors. The National Galleries of Scotland: National recorded a 43.8% increase to 1,836,057, while the Banksy exhibition helped boost visitor numbers for Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art by 60.4% to 510,936. (Read more)
Miners’ Strike memories | A major exhibition has opened exactly 40 years to the day since the start of the Miners’ Strike and which commemorates miners and their families. The National Coal Mining Museum exhibition opened on Wednesday, and will run until 3 March 2025, which will be exactly 40 years since the year-long strike ended. A public call out resulted in 100 people coming forward to help offer memories for the show. (Read more)
Victoria bust defaced | Two women have been charged after spray painting an obscenity on a plinth of a bust of Queen Victoria and for smearing the sculpture itself with jam. The incident occurred at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery which was briefly forced to close. A spokesperson confirmed the work was restored and there was no permanent damage. The incident was carried out by a group who protest over food security. (Read more)
Chiswick’s spruce up | West London’s Grade-I Chiswick House & Gardens has announced plans to redevelop ‘underused’ areas of the grounds and bring “historic spaces back to life”. There’ll convert sheds and stables to create affordable workspaces for artists and makers, as well as transform an “overgrown” 17th century walled garden into a community fruit garden. A fundraising campaign to secure the two-thirds of cash still needed will be launched later this year. (Read more)
News from around the world
France 🇫🇷 | The official posters for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games have been unveiled — and of course they’ve generated the latest ‘woke’ scandal. The two graphic works — by artist Ugo Gattoni and displayed at the Musée d'Orsay until Sunday — show a cartoonish depiction of the French host city. Right-wingers are spitting feathers though, accusing it of aiming to “distort reality to cancel [Frances’s] history.” Their fury has been sparked because it doesn’t feature a French tricolour. (Read more)
Netherlands 🇳🇱 | The Rijksmuseum has acquired the only signed painting by Gesina ter Borch, a member of one of the Netherlands’ most important artistic families of the 17th century. It was purchased on the opening day of TEFAF Maastricht and announced within minutes of the doors opening. The museum paid €3m for the work, which is a posthumous portrait of the artist’s younger brother Moses at the age of two. (Read more)
France 🇫🇷 | The scaffolding has come down and the reconstructed spire of Notre-Dame cathedral has officially been unveiled five years after the devastating fire. It’s an identical design to the 1859 version that was destroyed, and is topped by a recreation of the original cross as well as a golden rooster designed by architect Philippe Villeneuve who is leading the renovation works. It marks an important milestone in the lead up to December’s reopening. (Read more)
Denmark 🇩🇰 | Denmark has pledged to erect more statues of women, as it’s revealed their capital city has “more statues of mythical beasts and horses.” “It’s totally crazy” the culture minister said, as he announced plans to spend nearly £6m on addressing the imbalance. Of the 101 named statues in Copenhagen, only five are of women, while there are 26 dedicated to animals. An expert committee will be established to recommend new works. (Read more)
Best of the rest
Bottlecelli, geddit? | Botticelli’s Birth of Venus has been recreated in Glasgow — and it’s 25ft tall and made from 30,000 bottle tops. It’s been commissioned by Lidl to mark the success of their new bottle recycling scheme. (More)
Trust’s two helpings | Hit BBC Two show Hidden Treasures of the National Trust has been recommissioned for a second series. With the first drawing 2m viewers an episode, this new run will document recent conservation work. (More)
Planting for the future | A £245,000 grant will help create a permanent home for Liverpool’s historic 220-year-old botanical collection. Located within the estate of Croxteth Hall, it’s planned to turn it into a leading visitor attraction. (More)
Square Mile masterpiece | One of the treasures of the City of London’s art collection is back on display in its home after being on loan for a year. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s La Ghirlandata has been unveiled at Guildhall Art Gallery for International Women’s Day. (More)
Brick-by-brick | Famous artworks including the Mona Lisa and Michelangelo's David have been reconstructed in Lego in a huge newly-opened London exhibition. Why is it never Tracey Emin’s Bed or Duchamp’s Fountain??? (More)
Improve digital accessibility | Award-winning disability specialist and broadcaster Shani Dhanda will give a keynote speech on the importance of digital touchpoints for access and inclusion in museums and cultural organisations next month. You still have time to be there. (Book your place)*