Largest funding cut for Welsh museums
Largest funding cut for Welsh museums
PLUS: Eight weeks of strikes coming to National Museums Liverpool
This edition features Museum Wales | National Museums Liverpool | PCS Union | Arts Council England | Art UK | Van Gogh | Paris 2024 | Desert X AlUla | The Beatles | National Gallery
Happy Friday!
Although, if I’m honest, this week’s newsletter doesn’t contain the most happy of news for museums and galleries. Many of the biggest stories from the past seven days concern major funding cuts for major venues, job losses in the sector, and precarious finances that threaten the viability of whole venues and workforces. We’re only six weeks into 2024 and already it feels like this year is going to be the worse economically for cultural venues for quite some time — which is saying something.
However the year progresses, I’ll be reporting on it for you in this newsletter. That includes bringing you the news from bankrupt Birmingham Council which will finally unveil their budget later this month which is expected confirm major swinging cuts to cultural services.
In case you missed it, I touched on the financial concerns facing Birmingham’s Museums Trust in my interview with its CEO Sara Wajid this week. You can catch up here and below. While Sara admitted it’s a worrying time for the city’s museum workers, we were speaking on the occasion of an exciting new exhibition opening. Which I feel is a reminder that while there are huge challenges, the good work of museums and galleries and beyond goes on. And we should support them as much as we can.
Now let’s get into it!
— maxwell
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Need To Know
8 week strike called in Liverpool
Last week this newsletter reported that staff at National Museums Liverpool (NML) had voted in favour of strike action in a dispute over pay. Now the PCS Union has announced EIGHT WEEKS of strikes will kick off next week.
Beginning on 17 February, staff across seven of the national museum group’s venues will leave their posts. 94% of union members voted in favour of the action. The Union says that NML are refusing to pay staff a £1,500 one-off cost of living payment that the UK government agreed should be paid to all civil servants last year, and that they are the only employer out of 200 covered by the civil service pay remit guidance to withhold it.
In a statement, NML said “it would be impossible for us to cover the £1,500 [payment]” and that they have “pay freedom, meaning we are not governed by the civil service pay remit.” Remarkably, they also revealed they are forecasting a £2million deficit this year, and that if they were to pay the additional payment it would cost them £750,0000, placing them “below the minimum legal reserve levels.” (Read more)
Maybe relevant? NML continue to press on with their redevelopment of the International Slavery Museum which is costing £57 million.
£4.5m shortfall for Museums Wales
Wales’ national museums will see the largest ever funding cut in their history at the end of March, with £3m being axed from the annual grant from the Welsh government. The seven museums run by Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales are now running extensive compulsory redundancies and voluntary severance across the organisations.
Museum Wales say that the cut is made worse by their projected £1.5m deficit for the year and therefore most of the total shortfall will be met by staff cuts. The PCS union said the cuts will see the museums cease to fully function.
The funding reductions were announced as part of a budget proposal for 2024/2025 which the Welsh government has said is "the starkest and most painful financial situation" since devolution began. The Senedd’s culture committee, which is scrutinising the plans, did not make recommendations in a recent report to reduce the cuts. (Read more)
News from the UK
Job losses in Northampton | 12 posts at Northampton Museum and Art Gallery are being axed, with subject specialist curators taking the brunt of the cuts. Six new roles will be created however, including two new ‘general’ curators. The council said the reductions were due to it facing "enormous pressure on its services." The museum reopened in 2021 after a £6.7m revamp paid for by a hugely controversial sale of an Egyptian sculpture. (Read more)
Sums it up | Local authorities in England invested 23% less per capita in museums and galleries in 2022-23 than they did in 2009-10, according to new report from Arts Council England. This amounts to a real-terms decrease of 42.1% when inflation is taken into account. Just 0.16% of council budgets are now spent on museums in England. The Arts Council says it will use the data to make the case for more sustained investment. (Read more)
Vincent in Cardiff | A major masterpiece by Van Gogh is to go on public display in Wales for the very first time. 1887’s Portrait Of The Artist will go on show at the National Museum Cardiff in March, on loan from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. It’ll be shown in an exhibition about self-portraiture and is the final event in the Year Of Wales In France, a Welsh government initiative to create ties between the two countries. (Read more)
Mapping the murals | Britain’s 5,000 diverse murals and street artworks will be digitally recorded for the first time. Art UK’s three-year project — funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund — will see the works photographed, creating a vital public record for art that by its very nature is at risk of destruction and decay. Street artist Brave Arts said the project was “essential to capture fleeting moments in a culture that renews itself so quickly.” (Read more)
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News from around the world
France 🇫🇷 | The medals for the Paris Olympics this summer have been revealed — and each one will feature a piece of actual metal from the Eiffel Tower. A hexagonal, polished chunk of iron taken from renovations at the iconic landmark and kept for safekeeping will feature on each medal. “We realized that there’s one symbol known across the world, which is the Eiffel Tower” Joachim Roncin, head of design at the Paris Games, said. “The dream became reality” he added. (Read more)
Iraq 🇮🇶 | Italy has donated a reconstructed Assyrian statue to the Basrah Museum where it will reside permanently. Made using 3D-printing technology, it’s a replica of the ninth century BC ‘Bull of Nimrud’ which was destroyed by Isis fighters in 2015. The donation to Iraq was hailed as a “miracle of Italian cultural diplomacy” and Italy’s culture minister said they were “at the forefront of safeguarding cultural heritage.” (Read more)
Netherlands 🇳🇱 | A stolen Van Gogh painting has gone back on display for the first time since being returned to a ‘Dutch art sleuth’ — and with damage from its theft very much visible. The painting was stolen in a heist in March 2020 during Covid 19 but was sensationally returned to the ‘Indiana Jones of the art world’ last year. It’s now on show again, with a “severe” deep white scratch from the robbery. (Read more)
Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦 | The third edition of Desert X AlUla has kicked off today, seeing 15 newly-commissioned site-specific artworks installed in the vast ancient desert. This year’s iteration of the major outdoor art festival is dubbed ‘In the Presence of Absence’, and highlights include a football pitch made from stones by Ayman Yossri Daydban, and a shimmering spiral tunnel by South Korean conceptual artist Kimsooja. (Read more)
USA 🇺🇸 | The only artwork created jointly by all four Beatles has just sold for almost £1.4 million at auction in NYC. It was painted in July 1966, when the band was locked down in the presidential suite of the Tokyo Hilton after concerns for their safety. The painting remained in Japan for 46 years before it was bought by a private collector in New York in 2012. The hammer came down this week well above the £470,000 valuation by Christie’s. (Read more)
Best of the rest
Bed they’re shocked | Archaeologists have made the “exceptionally important” discovery of a complete wooden funerary bed, the first ever discovered in Britain. It was excavated from the site of a former Roman cemetery near Holborn viaduct. (More)
700 years later… | Engineers working on the National Gallery’s bicentenary revamp have unearthed remains from Saxon London, showing that it extended further west than previously thought. (More)
Brentford museum fundraiser | The quirky Musical Museum in Brentford has launched a £60,000 crowdfunding campaign to stay open. It says it needs funds to meet bills for lighting, heating and essential building maintenance, or it could close this year. (More)
Digital Works Conference | Museums and galleries need an editorial strategy! So let former Head of Digital at the Wellcome Collection Danny Birchall tell you the real value in thinking like a publisher, at this new conference for digital cultural professionals. (Find out more)*
I know someone who volunteered weekly at the Musical Museum in Brentford into his late-80s. Also, my grandad lived next to the museum until he passed away a few months ago.
Very sad to see the museum may have to close. Here's to their campaign!