When asked about returning the Parthenon Marbles, the British Museum likes to fall back on the arument that they couldn’t do so without a change in the law – making it a matter for the government. Yet at the same time, the government indicates that the issue is one for the trustees of the British Museum.

The government would like you to believe that the British Museum is entirely independent of government – the reality though is that the two are closely tied together – seeing the British Museum as a completely separate entity that is in complete control of all decisions is an inaccurate understanding of things. This is evidenced here, by the fact that (for whatever peculiar reasons) the British Museum can’t access large amounts of its own money because it is being with held by the government.

From:
The Art Newspaper

Treasury withholds museum donations
British Museum is denied access to £42.5m of its own cash
By Martin Bailey | From issue 218, November 2010
Published online 5 Nov 10 (News)

LONDON. UK national museums, including the British Museum and the National Gallery, have found it difficult to access over £50m donated by philanthropists, because of Treasury regulations. These are funds from donations and bequests which went into museums’ financial reserves and later fell under government control.

The scale of the potential problem is enormous, since the reserves for all national museums total £285m. The museums have not publicised the difficulty, fearing that this might rock the boat during delicate discussions with government.
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Museums are facing another funding crisis – but let us not forget that there are many (easily rectified) factors that contribute to their lack of funds.

Firstly, there is the fact that in many cases they have far more artefacts than they can ever display, but are not allowed to dispose of them – so must pay for the storage, maintenance & security for them.

Next though, is the fact that while some of the artefacts in their collections are disputed, other countries have offered loans of new high profile pieces if they are returned. People do not come back to museums to see the same stuff that was there the previous time – they come to see new artefacts such as these. Furthermore, temporary exhibitions are often subject to an admission charge, whilst the rest of the museum is free admission.

Surely re-thinking such factors could help to close the funding gap?

From:
Guardian

Let’s not do the timewarp again
Without money to buy new pieces, our museums will become monuments to the tastes of our predecessors. Where could the funds come from?
Jane Morris
Friday November 14, 2003

Britain’s museum directors warn that we are heading for a crisis. Lack of money to buy new things means that museums and galleries, rather like Miss Haversham, will become frozen in time, monuments to the tastes of 19th- and early 20th-century collectors and curators, but not of those today.

The fact that galleries have been refurbished and extended – from the National Gallery’s Sainsbury Wing to the creation of Tate Modern – masks a stasis in the collections, they say, which damages our cultural life far more than the leaky roofs or dodgy lavatories lottery money has largely done away with.
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Often, when an artwork in the UK comes up for sale, much is made about how it must be saved for the nation – to prevent it falling into the hands of a collector of museum abroad. When countries such as Greece request the return of their artefacts however, their statements are criticised as being purely nationalistic.

From:
Guardian

Tate chief attacks ‘save for the nation’ art policy
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent
Wednesday November 12, 2003
The Guardian

Sir Nicholas Serota, the most powerful man in the museum world, dramatically broke ranks with his colleagues yesterday to challenge the idea that vast sums of money should be spent to stop important works of art leaving Britain.

The director of the Tate museums delivered a devastating indictment of the reflex to blindly save treasures “for the nation” when foreign collectors or museums try to buy them, a sacred cow of cultural policy until now.
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